


And Then There Was One

by SpaceTimeConundrum



Series: Tales from a Red Police Box [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 1940s, Canada, Chameleon Arch, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Flashbacks, Medical Procedures, Mining Town, Murder Mystery, Pete's World, Post-Time War, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Science Fiction, Time War, Time War Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-04 13:52:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceTimeConundrum/pseuds/SpaceTimeConundrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end and aftermath of the Last Great Time War in the Pete's World Universe. Gallifrey falls, the Doctor is lost, and a killer is lurking among the residents of a town on the edge of the Canadian wilderness. Alt!Five's story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gallifrey Falls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Cover art.](http://40.media.tumblr.com/639982c7f0b13b9e5576c9e371e6104c/tumblr_mpp4b2TkQY1rgdsdho1_1280.png)

They were agreed.

As the finality of the decision sunk in, the Doctor felt strangely lighter, even though he knew what it meant for himself. It had been his idea after all, he wasn't about to allow any of them shoulder this burden. It would be enough that they were complicit in its execution; he alone should be responsible for the final act. Not that any of them had tried that hard to talk him out of it; their sympathy for his role in this only went so far. Ultimately, what they were proposing was horrific, means justified solely by the incalculable costs to the rest of the universe should the final Battle of Gallifrey be allowed to continue to its inevitable conclusion. If Koschei's suggestion worked, perhaps some of them might survive this, but he doubted any of them would truly thank him for this mercy. They would be the ones left to live with the guilt, after all.

It occurred to him, as he stood there, shivering in the cold winds that were a constant feature of this tiny, inhospitable moon that they'd used as their meeting place - speaking treason and plotting the end of everything they'd ever known and held dear - that if everything went to plan, he was looking at the very last of the Time Lords. Their once great and ancient society would soon be nothing more than the stuff of myths and legends. That it would be his hand that pressed the button made him feel ill. As a rule, the Doctor was the last person you'd expect to wax nostalgic regarding Gallifreyan society, but even he had trouble imagining a universe without it. For all its faults, it was still his home. At least he wouldn't be there to feel its absence.

The details decided on, there was little else for it but to say their goodbyes. Haste was the order of the day; Arcadia had already fallen. By now, Rassilon knew that he had the Moment and would be looking for him. It was unlikely that the Time Lord President suspected a conspiracy - yet - but any of them might have been traced here. The Doctor had only involved those he could trust, but consequently, they were all known associates of his to some extent. The notion of needing to hurry while in possession of a time machine would ordinarily seem paradoxical, but the war had done so much damage to the fabric of spacetime in this region, it was a legitimate concern. The only thing preventing reality from unravelling entirely was the time lock that had been implemented around Gallifrey. Because of it though, they were all moving rapidly toward a fixed point.

Their plan would use the chaos of the Dalek Crucible's attack on Gallifrey as cover while the Doctor and Koschei piloted his TARDIS to the Eye of Harmony at the centre of the planet, deep beneath the Citadel. Each of the others would use their own time ships to ensure that none of the Dalek or Time Lord ships within range interfered until the Moment could be activated. Those that could, would make their escape to the vortex at the last possible second and use their chameleon arch devices to alter their biological signature enough to avoid being caught up with the rest. Anything Dalek or Gallifreyan still alive when the Doctor used the Moment would be destroyed.

Long ago, before the Time War changed everything, the Doctor recalled lamenting, after preventing a nuclear war at the cost of many lives, that there should have been another way. His words then echoed in his mind now. It should not have come to this. But the Daleks were not going to stop and the High Council had become desperate enough that they were prepared to enact what Rassilon called "the Final Sanction" and rip apart the very fabric of time and space to end the war. It was madness, but after everything he'd seen, after everything they'd done to him, he knew they would do this too. And to prevent it, the Doctor was prepared to do the unthinkable. If saving the universe meant sacrificing his life and the whole of Gallifrey, then he had little choice to act otherwise. He and the others had gone over the scenarios relentlessly, trying desperately to find another answer, but every option in the timelines led to more death. This was their best hope to prevent the end of time itself.

His fate hanging grimly over his head like the fabled Sword of Damocles, the Doctor walked through the group, clasping hands with his friends and comrades one final time. Few of them could look him in the eyes, barely disguised pity lurking in their features. He couldn't blame them. He came to Romana last.

She, like many of them, had regenerated during the war and met his gaze with sympathetic honey brown eyes. Eyes that seemed far too old for her youthful face. When he saw understanding, not pity, in them, his throat burned as he suddenly felt himself teetering on the edge of real tears. Not wanting to break down here in front of everyone, the Doctor instead seized upon another impulse entirely and pulled the startled Time Lady into a tender kiss.

Thrown together by circumstance and meddling Guardians, they'd travelled together for many years, settling into an unlikely partnership. Though there'd been a few tender moments of mutual admiration, perhaps attraction between them, after their quest to assemble the Key to Time was finally completed, they'd been friends for so long that the idea of their relationship ever becoming anything different seemed unlikely. That is, until the war.

They'd been sitting in Romana's damaged TARDIS, too fatigued to begin processing the horrors they'd just witnessed after the first wave of Skaro Degredations devastated the Gallifreyan fleet, when it happened. The Doctor still wasn't quite sure which of them had initiated it, but somehow he ended up with his arms wrapped tightly around her, and things escalated from there. The shift from friends to lovers commenced without a word. Afterwards, Romana, ever the practically minded of the two, had insisted it was to be a one-off and made him promise that under no circumstances would he infer anything other than friendship from all of their future interactions. Then, naturally, as these things tend to, it happened again the next time they met.

It became almost a ritual nearly any time they found each other alone after a battle. It was easier than talking about what the war had done to them. Outside of these brief encounters, Romana maintained a strictly professional demeanour toward him. Respecting her wishes, the Doctor refrained from any public displays of affection and did his best to dismiss any and all romantic notions from his mind. They were fighting an impossible war, that had to be their first priority at all times. She'd been correct that emotional entanglement would only serve as a distraction on the battlefield. Had things gone differently, perhaps there might've been more for them, but as it was, mutual comfort amidst the storm was enough.

Here at the end though, there seemed little point in denying that he was, in his hearts, a sentimental old fool after all. He withdrew his lips from hers slowly and opened his eyes cautiously, half expecting her to be angry with him. Instead, she looked sad.

"Doctor..." she began.

"I know." He gave her a brief sheepish smile. "Romanadvoratrelundar, it was an honour to travel with you, my dear. If you survive, do one thing for me; _be magnificent_." He clasped his hands firmly on her shoulders once more before stepping back.

"Of course, Doctor." She gave him a tight smile that didn't reach her eyes.

His unexpected behaviour had not gone unnoticed by the others. Drax and the Corsair were both watching him with faintly amused expressions while Koschei had a strangely clouded look in his eyes. The rest seemed surprised and vaguely embarrassed to have witnessed what was clearly a rather private moment.

The Doctor cleared his throat to speak, but an appropriate epitaph for such a dire occasion failed him. In this instance, he was both the executioner and the condemned; his traditional response of gallows humour could not save him this time. So he slid his hands in his pockets, nodded solemnly to them all, and turned to walk slowly into his TARDIS.

Koschei followed him and together they set the coordinates for Gallifrey. The Doctor manned the navigational controls in silence while Koschei set up the chameleon arch for his own escape once they'd gotten the Doctor safely to the Eye. So far, the plan was working; they'd made it past the sky trenches undetected and had yet to encounter any of the Capitol's customary temporal shields. His TARDIS landed reluctantly, groaning in obvious pain; she could sense what was coming. He stroked her console and gave the time rotor a final look, swallowing his fear and regret.

"It was wonderful while it lasted, old girl," he whispered and hefted the Moment in his hands.

It was smaller than he'd expected, but heavy; altogether unimpressive for a sentient device that could burn entire galaxies from time, given a strong enough power source. That's where the Eye of Harmony would come in. When they'd locked it away in the Omega Arsenal, it had supposedly been disarmed by removing its internal power circuits but he could hear it ticking quietly as he held it. The sound seemed to reverberate in his bones and just looking at it made his time senses reel. He fought a wave of nausea and set the weapon gently on the floor. He could feel the box watching him, even as he turned his back to it.

One more farewell remained. He turned to face his childhood friend, the boy with whom he'd grown to adulthood in the Academy, until distance and a difference in philosophies led to their falling out. Both had disagreed with the Time Lords' policy of non-interference, but for different reasons. While the Doctor simply sought to prevent injustice and tragedy whenever he could, Koschei argued that with their superior knowledge and intellects, the Time Lords ought to take a more direct hand in the development of more primitive societies. He adopted the name the Master and left Gallifrey to prove his case for benevolent dictatorship. His efforts were less than successful and in many instances led to the former best friends finding themselves on opposite sides of conflicts. It had been the Master's mistake on Logopolis that resulted in the Doctor's regeneration and finally instigated a partial reconciliation of sorts between the estranged Time Lords when they encountered one another in the Death Zone.

When they met again, it was on the battlefields of the Time War and by then, neither could claim to be the same man as he had been before. That it should be the two of them here, in Gallifrey's terminal moments, struck the Doctor as fitting, in a way. Koschei looked exhausted and hollow in his torn uniform jacket, a darker reflection of the Doctor's own pale appearance, no doubt; he cradled the chameleon arch in his hands loosely, eyes downcast and heavily shadowed.

"Koschei, we haven't much time," the Doctor said, surprising himself that his voice did not shake as he spoke.

"Indeed, old friend," he replied quietly and set the device gingerly on the console. Koschei stepped closer to him and cupped the Doctor's face with a hand. "Pity that it must end this way, I should very much have liked to have done so much more."

The Doctor blinked in confusion but before he could respond, Koschei's mouth was pressed tightly against his own and he was backed up against a railing. His friend released him with a decidedly predatory, if regretful, gleam in his eyes. He stared at Koschei in shock.

"Apologies, my dear Doctor, though I must admit I should have done that ages ago. I do hope that you can find it in your hearts to forgive me this," he said. That was when the Doctor realised that his wrists had been locked to the railing, holding him effectively immobile.

"Koschei! What... what are you doing?" he tugged against his restraints.

"What must be done." His gaze shifted to the Moment on the TARDIS floor. "You have forgotten that I owe you a debt. You've always been the tender hearted one, Theta; let's face it, if one of us deserves to live through this, it should be you."

"Koschei, no." The Doctor's voice was hoarse.

The Master ignored his pleas and approached him carrying the chameleon arch. "I've set the controls to human; you always were overly fond of that backward planet. The manacles will release in an hour, but by that time you will hardly be yourself." He slid the apparatus over the struggling Doctor's head.

"You can't do this, it's supposed to be me, this was all my fault!" The Doctor was becoming desperate.

The Master shook his head. "If some day you manage to regain your senses, remember me fondly, Doctor." He ran a hand through the Doctor's blond hair affectionately, still cropped short from where the field surgeon had clipped it to mend a wound weeks (or had it been years) ago, and switched on the chameleon arch. The Doctor's knees buckled instantly and he screamed as the device set about rewriting his biology.

Moving with brisk efficiency, Koschei flicked the programmed flight switch on the console, picked up the Moment, and walked to the door. He paused to cast one last look behind him before stepping out of the TARDIS to seal Gallifrey's fate.

" _Au revoir_ , Doctor."


	2. The Sum of His Memories

_"A man is the sum of his memories, you know. A Time Lord even more so."_

He remembered things that hadn't happened yet sometimes. Or couldn't have happened. Bits and pieces of lives never lived, places that he's sure he'd never been, places that probably didn't even exist. Couldn't exist. For a long time he thought that perhaps he was going mad; like many other veterans, he'd returned from the war with more scars than you could see. He'd observed the symptoms in servicemen returning from the front often enough to recognise them in himself. But there were times when he wondered if that was all it was.

It didn't help that his recollection of the actual events of his life was muddier than most, thanks to the stray piece of shrapnel to the head that put him in hospital until after the armistice had been signed. He could recite word for word every single line of his service record, but the details themselves played out in his memory as a jumbled cacophony of impossible worlds interspersed with images of death, metal monsters, burning pain, and the sensation that time itself was twisting around him. He didn't like to talk about the war, and did his best not to think about it but there was very little he could do about the dreams.

On good nights, he slept soundly and peacefully, never stirring until the morning. On bad nights, the war invaded his mind and he woke covered in cold sweat, shaking uncontrollably and unable to return to sleep for fear of the horrors that awaited him there. Then there were the nights when he lied awake and tried to fit the pieces together, work out the puzzle of his memories and why sometimes he knew things that he shouldn't. Those were the worst, because when he considered the possible answers, he knew there was really only one that explained everything. He wasn't going mad. _He'd already gone._ And that chilled him to the bone.

**Late February, 1949. Northeastern British Columbia, Canada.**

_Heat. Orange and yellow flames climb higher. Oh, it burns, it burns, it burns! He grits his teeth and pushes forward. It's when it stops hurting that he starts to worry. The longer this war goes on, the more brutally simple the Daleks' tactics have become. Fire works just as well at driving them back as anything else and is dead simple to deploy._

_He can feel the Loop coming, like a tremor in his fingertips; he has less than twelve minutes until this timeline resets. The inevitability of it weighs on him, because he knows that on the next iteration, the order to retreat will be given sooner, once again abandoning the inhabitants of an innocent world to their fates without even an attempt at saving some of them. It's no wonder that the rest of the universe is beginning to look upon them with as much disgust as the Dalek Empire._

_He can smell burnt flesh and hear his skin sizzling but does his best to hold off the crackling regeneration energy rapidly flooding his circulatory system; it'd only be reversed with the rest of this timeline and he always felt ill on the reset when that happened. He didn't particularly enjoy the reminder of what they'd done to him that every regeneration brought now either. Best if he focused on memorizing what he could of the Dalek deployment positions to tell Command when he was returned._

_His vision is blurring with the pain though, and he can feel the frantic double heartbeats in his chest growing weaker; he's not going to be able to avoid it this time. He'd just have to try and avoid getting sick all over his boots again. And they call me the Oncoming Storm, he thinks bitterly. Gulping in one final breath, he straightens and unclenches the mental fist he'd had wrapped tightly around the energies inside him. He screams as flames of a different sort entirely engulf him._

He woke in a panic, clutching at the bedclothes and gasping for air. It had been months since he'd last had a dream that violent; he'd almost started to hope that he'd banished them from his mind forever. He focused on calming his breathing, watching the thin cloud of each exhalation rise and drift away in the moonlight. The fire in the tiny furnace at the centre of the room had dwindled overnight, leaving the cabin air cold against his sweat-dampened skin. He shivered and rose to fetch a bit of wood, trying to ignore the thoughts of burning alive that tending the coals inspired.

Wearily, he retrieved his journal from his desk and scratched out what he could recall of the dream before it retreated entirely to his unconscious mind again. He closed the notebook and put it away quickly when he was done; he didn't feel like dwelling on what it all meant right now. He set his glasses down on the desk and rubbed his eyes.

"John?" a sleepy voice called from the bed. "What are you doing up?"

"Just another nightmare," he answered her, "nothing to worry about."

"Come back to bed; you'll freeze if you sit up all night thinking about it."

He rejoined her under the heavy quilt, wrapping his arms around her. She gave a contented sigh and snuggled against him, sharing her warmth and helping him to dismiss his dark thoughts for now.

**May, 1946.**

From the back office, Elizabeth heard the bell on the shop's front door jangle. Ernie's here early, she thought, and carefully manoeuvred herself around the stack of books she'd been sorting to go and greet him. Mid-mornings were when she got most of her work done in the shop; after the early rush, very few people came in until after the school let out in the afternoon, though the occasional visitor during the lunch hour was not unheard of. Ernie Pickering was a rare exception; he owned the barbershop down the street and came by regularly every morning with his thermos of coffee to chat with her. Elizabeth didn't mind, he was a friendly old soul and always had the latest news from about town and political goings-on with the mine.

Since moving back home she'd had blessed few people to talk to other than her father, and as much as she loved him, his illness made long conversations difficult. Friends she'd known as a child had either moved away like she had and not returned or settled down with families of their own and now regarded her with suspicion. Her stint in the "Big City" marked her as an outsider in their eyes, though it wasn't even as though she'd done anything particularly scandalous there, working as a secretary for a lumber company while writing stories for magazines at night.

She'd been happy in Vancouver and missed it dearly. She'd still be there right now if her mother hadn't passed away unexpectedly last year.

Exiting the office, she was surprised to see an unfamiliar man in the shop. He had his back to her and stood quietly perusing the bookshelves with his hands in his pockets. She cleared her throat and asked, "can I help you find anything?"

At the sound of her voice he started and spun to face her, his wide blue eyes registering alarm before he caught himself and schooled his features back to something resembling calm. He was tall and boyishly handsome, perhaps a few years older than her at most, with very short, dark blond hair combed neatly to one side. He was dressed far too nicely to be one of the miners, in a brown tweed suit and tie with a green cable knit sweater. Further piquing her curiosity was the jagged pink scar running the length of his scalp above his ear on the right side, just visible in the morning sunshine streaming through the shop window. She resisted the impolite urge to inquire after its origins and instead offered him a pleasant smile.

"No, ah, just looking, thank you," he stammered, becoming visibly embarrassed by her inspection. He had a lovely English accent.

She blinked and looked away from him self consciously. "Sorry, didn't mean to stare, just not used to seeing new faces in here all that often." She offered her hand to him. "I'm Elizabeth Frasier, pleased to meet you."

"Doctor John Foreman," he replied, giving her hand a brief squeeze before returning his hands to his pockets nervously. "I've only just recently arrived in town; I'm working at the hospital," he explained. Belatedly, she noticed the black medical bag resting at his feet. Perched atop it was a slightly battered brown fedora.

Sensing his unease, she retreated to behind the sales counter to give him space; she ought to return to her inventory anyway. "Welcome to Yellow Fork. Give a shout if you find anything you'd like to buy," she told him before making her exit.

Despite that awkward introduction, Dr. Foreman returned later that week and, as he gradually warmed to her more talkative nature, soon became a regular fixture in the shop, stopping in to speak with her on his way to (or from, occasionally) work most days. His company was a welcome addition to her routine; like herself, he was something of an outsider as a well-educated Englishman in a town dominated by its large silver mine and the ever-present Canadian wilderness.

From their frequent conversations she learned that the shy doctor had a keen interest in literature, wry sense of humour, and a positively disarming smile when one could be coaxed out of him. When she finally felt comfortable enough to ask him about the scar, he explained that he had served in the British Army Medical Corp during the war, and been injured by a shell fragment, but that he'd rather not discuss it. She didn't ask him anything more about the war after that; the haunted look in his eyes had told her enough. The scar itself soon disappeared from view as his hair grew out enough to cover it.

John was kind, thoughtful, and, despite his obvious discomfort around most other people, provided her with the much needed friendly companionship that not even her daily chats with Ernie had been able to fulfill. It being a small community, it wasn't long before their friendship became the stuff of gossip and innuendo. As one of the few unmarried young women living in Yellow Fork, she'd endured more than her fair share of attempted suitors and learned quickly to recognise the signs that a man was hoping for more. Since John had never been anything other than perfectly cordial on his visits, she ignored the chatter as idle speculation and went about her business as usual. 

It quite took her by surprise when one evening he leant forward and kissed her.

They'd been debating the merits of poetry versus prose at the time, with him vehemently defending the use of puns in both mediums against her laughing protests. They had the shop to themselves and he'd caught her off guard by uttering an egregious example of a successful literary pun that made her groan and roll her eyes. One moment she was shaking her head and trying to come up with a suitable retort, the next, his hand had closed over her own and his lips were gently pressed against hers. The kiss was light and sweet and wholly unexpected.

When she was too stunned to react initially, he pulled back anxiously, cheeks flushed bright red and began a litany of apologies as he tried to flee. She had to grab his arm and drag him into another kiss to keep him from running from the shop.

They were married four months later, just before Christmas.


	3. If You Open Your Eyes

_"There's always something to look at if you open your eyes."_

**Early March 1949.**

_He fumbled for the sun visor on his helmet as he cleared the planet's long shadow and the jagged ice field he was floating in became blindingly bright. From behind the dark polarized glass, it was a breathtaking sight; the rings glittered like diamonds, stretching out in a graceful arc around the turquoise planet below. From his vantage point, he could just make out the battle continuing in low orbit. Sound didn't carry through the vacuum of space and his comms unit had been damaged in the blast, so he had only his own echoing respiration to keep him company while he awaited rescue._

_If he got desperate, he might try to reach out telepathically, but that was an especially dangerous thing to do in the middle of a war zone; it opened your mind up to so much additional trauma that most with those abilities kept them locked down tightly against outside intrusion. Getting someone to hear him, let alone listen, would be a miracle._

_At least the emergency beacon on his suit was still functioning. Someone would notice his signal eventually, probably. He had enough of an oxygen supply to last another ten hours for certain, perhaps longer if he induced a hibernative coma. After that... he didn't think his suit would survive a regeneration, making it an extremely short resurrection if he was left exposed to the cold vacuum without air to breathe. There was nothing he could do about it though, so he pushed that thought to the back of his mind as an eventuality to be dealt with when it came to pass, not before._

_There were worse ways to go, he knew. If this was to be it, he was grateful to have a taste of beauty and tranquillity before the end._

John woke feeling unsettled by the rapidly fading dream. It hadn't been a nightmare, per se, in fact, it had been strangely peaceful, but it still disturbed him. He rolled over to reach for his wife, seeking the comfort of her company. Elizabeth's unruly dark curls contrast sharply against the white of her pillow in the faint pre-dawn light, giving her skin an ethereal quality that made him worry that he was still dreaming. Her body felt real enough under his fingers though. She smiled and leaned into his touch, so he bent his head to kiss her neck and slid his hand lower. 

Neither of them were due to go in to work today and there were other ways to remind yourself that you were alive. 

— 

The call came at just after ten. John had been outside, attempting to repair a broken step on the back porch when he heard the telephone's distinctive jangle. Ches, never a fan of the device, rose from his highly important supervisory post to howl along in protest. 

"Shush, you!" he scolded the unrepentant labrador, tapping him lightly on the snout as he went inside. 

Elizabeth had answered it, and passed the handset to him with a worried look. "It's the hospital for you, something's happened at the mine."

'Something' turned out to be an explosion that had killed at least seven men and injured several more. Survivors were still being brought in from the site when John arrived at the hospital. They were not a large facility, but as it was the only hospital of note within three hundred kilometres, they would have to do their best. 

It was hours later before John had a moment to sit idle and rest. They'd lost two more men in the afternoon and five others lay teetering at death's door in the ward. Someone would have to keep watch over them through the night, and unfortunately, that someone was him, as the other physicians had already been working shifts when the first casualties rolled in. 

Rubbing his temples, John retreated to his office to ring Elizabeth and let her know. Fortunately, it had been long enough that their tiny local switchboard was no longer overwhelmed with frantic family members trying to find out had happened at the mine. He didn't get her on their home line, so he tried the shop; his father-in-law picked up on the third ring. 

“Frasier's Fine Books and Periodicals,” answered the gravelly voice. “How can I help you?”

“Mr. Frasier, it's John; is Elizabeth there with you?” Somehow it never felt quite right for him to call the man 'Harold' as his wife had insisted he was welcome to. The old man seemed to appreciate the gesture as a measure of respect at least. Their relationship had never been a warm one; Harold Frasier's opinion of the young doctor had progressed from cool suspicion to reluctant acceptance once he'd become a permanent addition to the family, but that was as far as it went. 

Despite this, he was incredibly fond of Chesterton, their dog. To John's mild frustration, the friendship was mutual; whenever they saw Elizabeth's father, Ches gravitated to the old man's side and followed him around like a devoted puppy. Elizabeth thought it was funny and pointed out that Ches was just protecting him, like he tended to with John's patients whenever he was able to bring the dog to work with him. Since he'd often joked that Chesterton was a better doctor than he'd ever be, John couldn't really argue with her.

Mr. Frasier mumbled something in the affirmative and handed the telephone to his daughter. “John? What's going on over there? The news is all over the town, but I think I've heard six different versions of what's happened. I'm beginning to think they're all just guessing at this point.”

“You've probably heard more than I have then,” he answered, a tired smile in his voice. “I've been too busy putting people back together to get much of the story.” He thought for a moment; he _had_ overheard one of the foremen talking earlier. “I think they're still investigating the cause; might've been a bad blasting cap or a gas pocket. The explosion caused a partial cave-in of the level above and it took them a while to dig everyone out. Nine dead for sure; Alan notified the families already. We have the rest of the seriously injured miners here on the ward. I've got the night shift; that's what I rang to tell you.”

Elizabeth let out a slow breath that crackled through the earpiece. “I think I'll stay in town tonight with Dad then. I can come fetch you in the morning, if you like?” She had the car, having taken it after dropping him off at the hospital earlier. Normally, he'd walk to the shop after work and they'd drive home together, unless the weather was bad or he'd kept the car to make house calls.

“That'd be lovely. I'll ring the shop when my relief comes on duty.” He yawned. “Best be getting back to it. Love you,” he added, feeling especially sentimental after the harsh reminder of human mortality he'd had that day.

“Love you too, John. Don't forget to eat something if you can.” Elizabeth knew him all too well. He rung off and rubbed his face to wake himself up. Time to find the pot of coffee and check on his charges again. 

The night nurse walked with him on his rounds, reporting her observations and taking notes while he fussed with each of the patients in turn. The ward was quiet, all of the miners hurt in the explosion were heavily sedated at the moment or otherwise sound asleep and their concerned families escorted out when visiting hours ended a while ago. It would be just him and Carol keeping an eye on them tonight. 

He looked at her when they were done; she seemed exhausted as well. “Have you had a chance at a break yet, or to phone home?” he asked her. She shook her head. “Go on then, I'll mind the flock for a bit,” he shooed her away and took up his post at the nurse's station at the end of the row. A brimming mug of coffee and the paperback novel he kept tucked in the pocket of his white coat would keep him company.

The evening passed slowly, and he and Carol switched off twice more before it happened. It was getting on near four o'clock in the morning when he had a seat in the ward again and she left to visit the washroom and fix another pot of coffee for them. John would've preferred tea, if he was honest, but the need for more caffeine won out over simpler pleasures. 

Reading was starting to prove difficult for him, he could feel the beginnings of a migraine building. Another remnant of the war, he got them sometimes when he was tired or stressed. Taking his glasses off and setting them down, he pressed his fingertips over his sinuses and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will the headache away. When Carol came back, he'd have to go take something before it got any worse. 

The creak of bedsprings and a quiet shuffling sound filtered through to his brain and made him look up. One of the patients was out of bed, and had moved to hover at the bedside of a fellow miner. John stood to speak to him, ready to advise him that he really mustn't be up and about just yet, but the words never made it out of his mouth. He saw the standing miner reach out to touch the other man's face and then everything went white with pain.

When John came to, several minutes later, he found himself back in his chair, with no sign of the standing patient. Wait, no. He counted; the patient's bed was still empty. He scrambled to his feet and dashed across the linoleum floor. There, crumpled on the ground like a marionette with its strings cut, next to the other man's bed, lay the miner. Frantic, John felt for a pulse at the man's throat and found nothing. He was dead.


	4. The Illusion of Normality

_"The illusion is always one of normality."_

John shouted for help and hurried to take action, rolling the man carefully onto his back. He wasn't breathing and had no pulse, but his body was still warm. If he'd been well enough to climb out of his bed just minutes earlier, perhaps there was still some hope of reviving him. The nurse came running and together they began administering rescue breaths and chest compressions to the man. Around them, the other patients slept on in their medicated states, undisturbed by the commotion caused by John and Carol's efforts to resuscitate their comrade.

It didn't work though. Their patient was gone. After several minutes of trying with no discernible effect, John admitted defeat and rose wearily to fetch a gurney while Carol checked on the others.

The dead miner was named Alexander Goodman, a native boy from the looks of him. A significant percentage of the miners were Indians with a smaller number of Chinese ancestry, a fact that had created a bit of a tension in the town when white workers began returning to the area in greater numbers after the war and rankled at the competition.

A few skirmishes had broken out over the desegregation of the company bunkhouse over a year ago, a move inspired more by the economic concerns of the company than any nobler intentions, unfortunately. John had been quietly pleased when the hostilities had fizzled back to an uneasy truce once the men had gotten used to the new situation. It had seemed like such an idiotic thing to fight over to him, but he'd learned to be careful about voicing his opinion publicly on such matters, it tended to lead to trouble with his patients and colleagues who felt differently. His habit of treating everyone equally regardless of race or religious affiliation already made him popular in some quarters and less so in others. Weighing in on political issues was more than socially dangerous though; the mining company owned half the town and their sponsorship paid most of his salary.

According to his papers, Goodman had been just twenty-two years old. And, out of all the patients resting in the ward that night, was probably the one whose prospects for survival John had been least concerned about. He'd only been kept overnight because he'd been confused and unresponsive when they'd brought him in from the site; the lad had likely sustained a concussion. He'd been battered, certainly, and was running a low grade fever, but none of his injuries should have _killed_ him. And yet, they'd lost him.

While Carol watched over the ward, John had the unhappy task of removing the body to the basement, to join his unfortunate fellows in the morgue.

Rupert would have to perform a post-mortem later, but John suspected they must have missed something when they treated him earlier. A slow internal bleed that ruptured suddenly when he stood or a stroke or pulmonary embolism could've caused his unexpected collapse. The old surgeon would have a busy day tomorrow. For most of the men killed, the extent of their injuries made the cause of death obvious; in those cases, a certificate would be issued without delay. A few others, like Goodman, would require more thorough investigation.

The budding migraine that had incapacitated the doctor on the ward had faded to a dull throb and lingering sensitivity to light. John put a hand to his aching head as he shut the heavy door behind him, leaving poor young Mr. Goodman in the dark, chilly room to await his appointment with Dr. Marshall's blade.

Once he'd shared his account of what happened, the remaining hours of their overnight shift passed in painful silence as neither he nor Carol felt particularly like sustaining a conversation afterwards. Michael Hodges, the patient whom Goodman had been attempting to contact, hadn't stirred at all through the ordeal. John wondered if the two men had been friends or if he'd simply been in the nearest bed to Goodman's. He wrote up his report dutifully and the rest of the night passed without incident.

He was glad when Dr. Eugene finally arrived to relieve him. His explanation of the situation to the other physician was terse and met with resigned understanding. The middle-aged man passed a hand over his dark hair and shook his head sadly. 

“I don’t suppose you’ve told the family yet?” he asked.

“Not sure he has any. None local, at least,” John replied.

Dr. Eugene sighed. “I’ll put Miss Cartright on it then,” he said, naming the small hospital’s sole administrative employee. “If he’s got people, they may have an address for them in his work records.” He frowned and eyed John. “You look half dead yourself, Foreman. Go home. Get some sleep.”

John chuckled tiredly. “I intend to.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ll be back to spell you at six then.” Until they’d cleared the ward, the small hospital's three physicians would have to rotate shifts to ensure one of them was on duty at all times. Having just worked two shifts back to back on what was supposed to have been his day off, John wasn’t exactly looking forward to returning in less than twelve hours, but needs must. Hopefully his next overnight vigil would be less eventful.

One telephone call to the bookshop later, and he was able to make his escape. Walking briskly across the frost-covered lawn to the tiny car park, he climbed gratefully into the passenger seat of the faded yellow sedan just as it pulled up and leaned over to give his wife a kiss on the cheek. Chesterton raised a doggy eyebrow at him from the back seat and thumped his tail sleepily in greeting.

“Morning,” he greeted her wearily, stowing his medical bag in the footwell. 

“Hello,” said Elizabeth, smiling as she put the ageing Ford into gear. “Long night?”

John held his hands near the small electric heater on the floor to warm them and told her as she drove. The weather was still cold, but the roads were clear of ice, the remnants of winter relegated to muddy snow banks lining their forested route home and determined patches of white lingering on the shadowed mountain slopes around them. Spring would win out eventually, but not soon enough in John's opinion.

— 

_“Tell them if they don’t let us dock and make the repairs, they’ll have eight hundred corpses in a metal can floating on their doorstep, leaking temporal radiation like a shining beacon for the Daleks to follow! We’re a hospital ship, dammit!” The woman speaking heatedly into the microphone closed her eyes and leaned forward to rest her head on her forearm, which was braced against the ugly, battle-scarred bulkhead, while she awaited a reply._

_It was probably the only thing aside from sheer, stubborn will that was keeping her upright at the moment. They’d all been working for days trying to get the patients stabilized and restore enough critical systems to limp the ship into a station since they’d been hit. Normally, medical transports would be considered off-limits to enemy attacks, but the Daleks had no use for the formalities of “civilized” warfare. Their goal was the complete elimination of all species other than their own. The green crescent painted on the hull and noncombatant transponder codes only made them easier targets for extermination as far as they were concerned._

_Once again the Doctor found himself wishing he had his TARDIS with him. He’d been separated from his ship when the enemy’s raiding party had appeared ahead of schedule, scooped up with other survivors of the initial attack and evacuated off-world just before the rest of the fleet arrived. When the crew discovered he was a Time Lord, they’d nearly tossed him out an airlock then and there, until he’d explained that he was a doctor and could help._

_They’d barely made it out of the system when they encountered another Dalek scout ship. Luckily it’d been alone, and the Doctor’s last second tactical suggestion had worked, otherwise that would’ve been the end of the line for them all. It was only a temporary reprieve though; if they weren’t able to complete their repairs, they'd be sunk anyway._

 _The Chief Medical Officer's remark about radiation hadn't entirely been a bluff - the ship wasn’t equipped with a temporal drive any more than it was weaponry, but its engines were failing and emiting all kinds of electromagnetic exhaust into space. Their ionization wake undoubtedly painted nearly as clear a picture of their location as a blood trail leading back to a wounded animal in a forest. They’d never make it to another station like this and it was only a matter of time until the radiation shielding protecting the passengers failed or something else went critical._

_From his position bent over an emergency pallet, fixing torn sutures on a man’s thigh, all the Doctor could do was listen for the report from the pilot and hope that they’d see sense. The wait was agonising._

_Finally: “We’ve been cleared for docking. On the condition that we leave the system within twelve hours.”_

_A hearty cheer went up through the overcrowded bunks._

_“You heard Commander D’uane. Look lively everyone, we’ve got a lot to do and the clock is ticking!” the officer shouted to her crew, eyes fever-bright with renewed energy._

_The Doctor tied off the last replacement suture and stood to offer his assistance with the engines. A rough voice behind him arrested his hasty departure though._

_“Are we going to make it then?” the man with the leg wound asked him, his face ashen from blood loss and pain._

_Their odds had certainly improved, but they still weren’t good. The Daleks were still out there, somewhere, and even with repairs, they’d likely not survive a second encounter. The Doctor smiled tightly and squeezed the man’s hand. “Of course,” he lied, “we’ll be fine.”_

The sun was barely an hour away from slipping behind the white-capped mountain peaks that dominated the western horizon when John woke feeling famished and slightly irritable. Even though he’d been exhausted when he got home, it had taken him a few hours to fall asleep and his dreams had been unnervingly detailed. It felt as though he was reliving someone else’s memories rather than experiencing a product of his own - apparently vivid - imagination. He climbed out of bed in a distracted fog and shuffled across the cabin to get ready for work.

Elizabeth took pity on his sorry state and supplied him with hot tea and a generous helping of venison stew in a thermos to eat later before ushering him out the door again. As he drove, he kept picturing the young miner’s face in the place of the man in his dream who’d asked if they were going to be okay.

— 

The post mortem report for Alexander Goodman found heat damage to his lungs and throat; he’d asphyxiated and none of them had noticed him wheezing or otherwise having difficulty breathing until it was too late. His death was attributed to smoke inhalation from the mine explosion, but John couldn’t help but feel guilty about it. He’d listened to the lad’s chest less than three hours before he passed away and heard nothing suspicious. If he’d shown any symptoms, they might have been able to save his life.

The next couple days at the hospital were quiet enough. The remaining men on the ward seemed to be on the mend. The last few would be sent home on Wednesday to finish recuperating there, if their progress continued as expected. John held his regular clinic hours on Monday and was able to spend that night at home with his wife. 

In town, finger pointing had already started over the cause of the explosion. None of the men who’d survived had been close enough to have seen exactly what happened. The Company was maintaining that it had either been pure bad luck or a mistake made by the demolition crew, while the union representatives had seized upon the opportunity to raise the issue of on-going safety concerns, arguing that regardless of the cause, fewer lives would have been lost had better precautions been taken with the blasting procedure. A public memorial service was being planned for the coming Friday, after the families had held their private wakes. It was odds on whether the event would devolve into a shouting match between union and company men at this point.

John was in his office late Tuesday afternoon, sorting though a stack of patient files that needed notations when Sally Oberle knocked on the door and stuck her head in.

“Dr. Foreman?”

“Yes?” He set his reading glasses down on the desk to look up at her.

“I’m taking my dinner break. Charlie Billings is out there right now, talking to the men about the accident. I told him you were in here if anything happens.”

John nodded to the nurse. “Leave the door open then, will you?” Billings was the company’s risk management officer, and not the most popular man in Yellow Fork at the moment; he wanted to be able to hear if any shouting matches started on the ward.

She left with a friendly wave and John went back to his paperwork. 

Ten minutes after her departure, though nary a worrisome sound had reached his ears, John's mood had inexplicably declined. The sheet of paper in front of him kept wavering in and out of focus annoyingly as he wrote. He sighed and adjusted his glasses, but they weren’t much help. Tension was building up again behind his temples and the lamp had gained a visible glowing halo like a doubled film exposure. Swearing a little under his breath, John pulled open the top drawer of his desk, searching for the pain medication he kept there.

He’d just gotten the cap off the bottle when a starburst of pain staggered him, causing him to fumble the pills, spilling them all over the desk. Reaching blindly for them, he managed to locate and swallow two dry with his eyes closed tightly. Then he sat clutching his head for several minutes, breathing as calmly as possible until the intense sensation subsided. The building could have been fully ablaze for all he was aware of his surroundings for that time.

Eventually, the medication blunted the worst of it, and he realised that someone was calling his name frantically. 

John stood, shaken and sweating from the episode and ran for the ward.

Coming in, he nearly collided with one of the patients, who must’ve gotten up to help when Sally’s shouting had failed to summon him. Sally herself was occupied at the bedside of another of the men - Hodges, he realised with alarm - and was trying valiantly to revive him. 

“There you are, doctor. What took you?” she exclaimed. “He’s stopped breathing!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note regarding terminology: I've used the term "Indians" here to refer generally to aboriginal Canadians rather than "First Nations" because that's how they would have been referred to at the time; the current preferred nomenclature, as far as I can tell, has only been in use since the 1980s. In writing this story, I want to present as credible a picture of the social and political climate as I can, which means acknowledging issues like racism and the impact of colonialism, however, this is primarily a scifi murder mystery and there's really only so much research and social commentary I can reasonably squeeze in without overwhelming the focus of the plot. My treatment of these issues will be necessarily rather cursory at best, but what I do write I will try to make at least moderately historically accurate.


	5. A Straight Line

_"A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting."_

They worked until their arms were shaking and their faces red from the effort, but Michael Hodges was gone, just as Alexander Goodman had been three days before.

John stood looking down at the man’s limp body, his face blank. Another sudden death on his watch. Multiple fractures aside, the man's condition had been stable, and all indications were that he was on the mend. Hodges hadn't been very talkative during his stay on the ward, but he’d at least been alert and answering questions earlier that afternoon when John had made his rounds. It didn’t make sense.

“What happened?” John asked the nurse, keeping his voice low. Canvas partitions had been set up between the beds to afford the miners some degree of privacy while their families visited and the company man conducted his interviews, so there hadn't been an audience watching them work, but he was cognizant of the fact that the other patients might be listening in.

She shook her head. “I came back from dinner and found he wasn’t breathing when I looked in on him. Where were you?” she asked him somewhat sharply. “I called for you several times. You were supposed to be available if anything happened on the ward.”

“Washroom,” he lied, not wanting to admit he’d been incapacitated by a headache. “I’m sorry. I came as soon as I heard you. As much good as it did,” he muttered. He looked back at the dead man in the bed. “Not breathing,” he repeated quietly. “Did he have a pulse when you checked on him?”

“None that I could find. He was as still as the grave,” she said, touching a tiny cross pendant she wore under her grey and white uniform. "He was awake and talking with Mr. Billings when I left." She sounded as just as bewildered as he was.

John bent to examine the man’s body more carefully. His cracked lips had a bluish cast to them and there were faint purple marks across his throat and collar bones. He’d been pretty badly battered when the mine shaft had collapsed, but these seemed newer, like someone had handled him roughly by the neck recently. A wave of unease came over him, causing his stomach to clench. John straightened abruptly.

“Where is Mr. Billings? Has anyone else been in to see Hodges today?” There was an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

Sally shook her head. “He wasn’t here when I got back. You don’t think…?” Her eyes widened in alarm. “What reason could Charlie Billings possibly have to hurt Mr. Hodges?” she whispered. “Far more likely the other way 'round. I can think of plenty of folks who might want to throttle Charlie these days.”

“I’m not saying he did hurt him, but I don’t like the looks of those bruises and neither of us were in the room when he died.” John was frowning. He glanced up at the clock on the wall over the nurse’s station and was surprised by how much time had passed. It had been well over an hour since Sally had stopped by his office.

“What about the other patients? There were three more people on the ward,” she said reasonably, "they - you - would've heard something."

“I’ll talk to them. Go ring Dr. Marshall, tell him what’s happened and then bring a gurney in for Mr. Hodges.” John pulled the thin hospital sheet over his former patient’s vacant face.

None of the patients claimed to have seen or heard anything unusual when he asked, but then they hadn't had much of a view from their beds with the partitions in the way. Charlie Billings had spoken with each of them in turn and left soon after sharing a few words with the dead man. Only Bill Mayhew, whose bed was nearest to the door, had actually seen Billings leave. Irwin and Pierce had only heard his retreating footsteps and then the heavy front door closing. It was Mayhew who’d gotten out of his bed to offer help when John hadn’t responded to the nurse's calls immediately. 

John was already second-guessing his reaction to the bruises on Hodges’ neck when Sally returned with a rolling gurney. He’d been holed up in his office with a migraine while his patient took his last breaths and that failure weighed on his conscience. If it turned out that someone had killed Hodges, that would mean his death wasn't John’s fault, but so might any number of medical complications. The nurse was right to question his suspicions; he couldn’t really see anyone wanting to kill the injured miner and he didn’t think any of the patients had been lying when he spoke with them. Billings may have ruffled more than a few feathers in town investigating this incident at the mine, but doing his job hardly amounted to a motive for murder. He couldn’t allow his guilt to make him paranoid when there were far too many mundane explanations available. 

Besides, they didn’t even know what had caused the man’s death yet. Until a post mortem was performed, he should try to avoid jumping to conclusions. The examination would reveal whether there was anything to be suspicious about. John was a GP, not a detective, he reminded himself. Further inquiries were best left to Dr. Marshall and the local deputy coroner. 

Unlike Goodman, Hodges had local family, a wife and brother who also worked at the mine; both had come to visit him two days earlier. After they’d transferred the body to the basement, John took the man’s medical file and retreated to his office to make a difficult telephone call. 

Out on the ward, Sally Oberle began wheeling the canvas partition frames back to the far end of the room where they were normally stored.

—

News of Hodges’ death had already begun circulating in town when John came into the bookshop the next day to find his wife chatting with Ernie Pickering from the barbershop over their customary morning coffees.

“I had Constable Perry in my chair this morning. Said they’d been out to Charlie Billings’ place last night, asking him about Mike,” Pickering was saying. “Seems he was there at the hospital yesterday, talking with the men about the accident before it happened. Graham’s been in a state this morning because Charlie wasn’t supposed to be asking them questions without their union rep present.” The older man cast a conspiratorial glance at the young doctor. “Elizabeth says you were working last night, that right?”

“I can’t tell you anything about it, Ernie,” John deflected as he carried in the heavy parcels Elizabeth had sent him to collect. He set the boxes down behind the counter and headed back outside to fetch two more from the car.

“Can’t blame a man for trying.” Pickering grinned after him.

“Yes he can,” Elizabeth replied with a tolerant smile. “You’re incorrigible. You can’t think there’s actually anything to this suggestion that Mr. Billings had something to do with that man’s death.” 

“No, no,” he admitted. “Bert wouldn’t have said anything to me if it was serious, but there’s been talk of it going around, you know.”

“And you’re encouraging it,” Elizabeth admonished him. “It’s bad enough so many men have died because of this accident. We’ll have a brawl at the memorial service if this business keeps up.”

Pickering grimaced and nodded. “You’re right of course, my dear,” he said, not sounding entirely convinced that this would be a bad thing. He’d changed the subject by the time John returned though.

—

The remaining three hospitalised men were discharged as expected, sent home into the care of their family and friends with strict instructions to contact the medical staff immediately should they develop breathing difficulties or any number of other dire symptoms during their recovery. With no more overnight patients in need of supervision, things could return to their regularly scheduled routine at the hospital, the three physicians dividing their time between clinical duties and making house calls for less mobile patients. 

Dr. Marshall performed the post mortem on Hodges that afternoon. He called John into his office afterwards to discuss the case.

“It’s the damnedest thing,” he said, holding out the folder with his notes for the younger man to read. “Just like the other one, lungs and trachea swollen nearly shut. I don't understand it. I was the one who treated him when they brought him in from the site; there was nothing wrong with his lungs then."

"No chance he'd been strangled then?" John asked diffidently.

Dr. Marshall gave him a heavy-lidded look over his spectacles and sat down with a grunt. "You saw those marks too, did you? I'll admit the possibility did occur to me. But I don't think so, no. We'll have to wait for the laboratory reports to come back, but it looks like some sort of noxious chemical exposure."

"From the mine?" John returned the folder to the cluttered desk and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. "He doesn't show any symptoms until four days later, when it kills him? That's quite a delayed reaction, Rupert. And what about Goodman?" 

"Indeed." The old surgeon struck a match and lit the worn pipe he kept at his desk. He puffed at it contemplatively.

—

"Ready?"

Hat in hand, John stood in the doorway of the bookshop's back office on Friday afternoon. He wore his best dark suit and a muted tie, suitable for the memorial service they were about to attend.

"Just a moment." Elizabeth was adjusting one of her stockings. She'd worn trousers to work that morning and changed in the office after lunch. Smoothing the wool skirt back down over her knees, she straightened and smiled at her husband as she buttoned her jacket. "Is Dad in the car already?"

He nodded and helped her with her overcoat. "And Ches is safely upstairs, no doubt making himself comfortable on the furniture," he said, answering her next question. Persistence and beguiling brown eyes had won the prolonged battle of wills over repeated attempts to train Chesterton not to jump up on the sofa.

They walked out together, arm in arm.

The memorial service did not, after all, end in a melee, though it was a near thing at a couple points. Graham Crossly, the union man, traded several heated words with Charlie Billings after the latter delivered his brief condolences to the gathered families on behalf of the company. Only the swift intervention of a few members of the town's small police force kept the argument from escalating. The Mounties had purposefully worn their red uniforms to the service to remind everyone in attendance to behave themselves. 

Crossly left shortly after their conversation, making a bit of a show of his departure. Displaying slightly more restraint than his flamboyant counterpart, Billings also elected to make a hasty exit, wisely skipping out on the slow migration of many of the mourning townsfolk to the nearest bar.

John, Elizabeth, and her father remained long enough to pay their respects and then made their escape as well. Mr. Frasier fatigued rapidly in situations where standing for prolonged periods of time was required, but was too proud to actually admit this, so they used the - not untruthful - pretence that John still had rounds to make that afternoon.

John was secretly relieved to have the excuse, as large groups of people still made him tense. This crowd was especially difficult for him, considering how many of them he'd personally had to deliver the worst news to so recently.

Aware of this, Elizabeth squeezed his hand as they walked back to their car, her other arm looped through her father's, discreetly supporting him as well. John gave her a tight smile and squeezed back.

"They'll be talking of striking before the end of the month, mark my words," rumbled Mr. Frasier suddenly.

"Dad, don't say things like that. The last thing anybody needs around here is another work stoppage. You've heard about what's been happening in Quebec. It'll only mean more people hurt if they strike."

"I'm only saying it because it's the truth," he replied testily, gripping the door of the yellow Ford that John had opened for him. "I've seen it before and it's happening again. This town is a powder keg waiting to blow."

"Only because everyone's so upset about the accident right now," she said, climbing into the car.

"Exactly why the union is pushing now, they've got the catalyst they need," he argued.

"The last time there was talk of a strike, the store lost nearly two months revenue because people were afraid to spend anything on non-essentials. The whole town nearly shut down and the company didn't even give them what they wanted in the end," Elizabeth reminded him.

It wasn't that she didn't think the miners had a point about the safety conditions in the mine - she'd heard about the awful injuries that happened there all the time thanks to John - but she didn't trust either the company or the union men to avoid escalating the situation with violence.

"Well then, let's hope for all our sakes that they're able to come to a peaceful agreement before that happens," John spoke up, effectively ending the discussion.

—

After he dropped the Frasier contingent off at the shop, John went back to work. He had three patients to look in on who weren't well enough to make the journey into town to see him at the hospital.

His first two appointments ran smoothly, but it took him nearly an hour to extricate himself from the home of Edna Mosley, his last patient of the day. Mrs. Mosley was an elderly widow who'd moved to Yellow Fork sometime during the last ice age, as near as John could tell, and seemed determined to survive into the next one, despite suffering from a list of maladies a mile long. John liked her for some reason he couldn't explain, but it always took three times as long to perform medical examinations on her. She could talk for days if one let her. 

John had originally planned to look in on Bill Mayhew afterwards because he lived just across the street from Mrs. Mosley, and hadn't attended the memorial, but when he finally made it to the man's tiny house, he could feel another migraine coming on. Hastily, he retrieved some medication from his bag and gulped the pills down with a swig from the canteen he kept in there as well.

This time he managed to head the migraine off before it got too bad and the medication eventually blunted the pain enough for him to drive. When he got back to the bookshop he was feeling much better, but wasn't inclined to push himself. Elizabeth drove them home and John went straight to bed.

—

_A youngish seeming man with dark hair and eyes and about a week's worth of stubble on his face steps out of the incongruous marble column and laughs. He looks exhausted in his torn military tunic and his manic grin doesn't quite reach his eyes, but he does seem genuinely glad to see him._

_"Hello again, Doctor," the man says._

_Then the timeline shifts. And the Doctor is alone._

—

The telephone woke both of them up at just after five in the morning.

John half fell out of bed and stumbled through the chilly cabin to answer it while Chesterton supplied a chorus of accompanying howls from the comfort of his army blanket in the corner of the room.

"Chesterton, enough!" Elizabeth groaned from the bed. The dog ignored her until the ringing stopped.

It wasn't good news on the phone. Sometime in the night Bill Mayhew had passed away under circumstances that sounded eerily similar to Goodman and Hodges' mysterious deaths. His roommate had found him lying on the floor when he got home from working a late shift at a tavern in town.

—

Three curious deaths in a week was definitely cause for official concern.

Dr. Marshall was brought in to perform the examination immediately. When Mayhew's body turned out to have the same mysterious respiratory damage as the other two, the odds that it was a coincidence dropped dramatically. The Mounted Police launched a full investigation, as did the coroner's office, and the hospital staff were all asked to provide detailed information about the men's medical histories and whom they'd been visited by on the ward.

Additionally, because the dead men could've been exposed to something toxic in the explosion and subsequent cave-in, everyone who'd been involved in the accident or been working near that area of the mine recently was asked back to the hospital for a breathing test and careful examination. The mining company representatives were apoplectic about the insinuation that there might be an unknown deadly substance lurking underground, but they cooperated with the request. The risk of suffocation or poisoning when encountering natural pockets of gas in the tunnels was real in mining operations, but most were known hazards and accounted for, certainly none that would kill a man without warning, days later.

The testing took most of the day, and it was both a relief and a worry when none of the men they tested showed signs of respiratory injury. Either there was no naturally occurring substance in the mine causing these deaths, or it had already claimed its victims and now potentially lie in wait for the next unlucky miner to unearth it. Of course, all everyone in town was talking about was the possibility that someone was deliberately killing off survivors of the incident, one by one. That question, they had no answers for.


	6. Dreams Are Important

_“Dreams are important, never underestimate them.”_

The mysterious deaths, occurring in such close proximity to the accident at the mine, had left most of the town in a state of shock and the Foreman household was no exception. Once John returned from the hospital that afternoon, they went through the motions of their usual Saturday chores without much enthusiasm and spent the rest of the day tiptoeing around the topic foremost on their minds.

John sat on the sofa in the main room of their cabin after a late dinner, strumming half-heartedly at his guitar while Elizabeth scribbled editorial notes to herself on the first draft of a novel she'd been working on for several months now. A small blaze burned quietly in the fireplace, casting flickering shadows across the domestic scene.

The instrument had been a surprise for his last birthday. Elizabeth had spotted it in a mail-order catalogue and bought it on the optimistic assumption that a man who was always humming to himself or drumming out little tunes with his fingers might take to a musical instrument like a fish to water. (She wasn't wrong.) It wasn't the best quality; the faux woodgrain finish had started to peel already and it tended to go out of tune rather easily, but it hadn't been particularly expensive, and John liked it anyway. Having the guitar helped calm his nerves at the end of the day and gave him something to do with his hands. With practice, he'd learned to play a few recognisable tunes competently enough that his wife no longer regretted giving it to him.

He was too preoccupied to focus on playing it at the moment though. The situation with the miners was weighing too heavily on his mind. If the three men had all been murdered, he couldn't understand how it had been done. He himself had been present for two of the deaths and was just as mystified as everyone else.

While he thought, he absently fingered the notes to an old song, his eyes naturally gravitating to Elizabeth as he played. She looked up after a few minutes and caught him watching her.

"You're still thinking about it, aren't you," she said, effectively reading his mind. "Let the police do their job; if someone did kill those men, the Mounties will find them soon enough."

John dropped his gaze to the instrument in his lap. "I know, I know. But it just doesn't make sense. It feels like there's something we're all missing here and I ought to have seen it."

She set aside her papers and came over to join him on the sofa, displacing Chesterton, who resettled himself at John's feet with an audible sigh and rested his head on his paws.

"It wasn't your fault, John," she reminded him, patting his knee. "You did everything you were supposed to do. You couldn't have predicted what happened to those men."

He put down the guitar, leaning it against the arm of the sofa. "That's what I keep trying to tell myself," he said, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her closer. He sighed and watched the fire dance in the grate.

"Keep trying until you believe it," she insisted quietly, interlacing her fingers with his.

—

_"I said I would help if I could, but there's very little I can do for you if you don't tell me what's going on," he complained as the rickety lift descended into the murky depths of the seemingly abandoned factory._

_"We're nearly there," his host replied, ignoring his request for more information._

_None of his companions had spoken more than a few words since they'd set out from the crash site. The Doctor gripped the strap of his medical satchel tightly and tried not to assume the worst._

 _He'd had doubts about this group from the beginning because they'd known who he was before he introduced himself, but then these days he did have a bit of a reputation. His notoriety made it harder for him to tell who could be trusted, so he mostly avoided volunteering his identity until it became absolutely necessary to do so. The Wandering Healer. The Oncoming Storm. Sole Survivor of the Persideon Massacre. Dalek Command's Most Wanted. He'd earned many unofficial titles in this neverending war. His name either conjured up expectations that he could perform miracles or not-unreasonable fear of the death and destruction that often followed in his wake. In this instance, he'd come anyway, because in spite of everything he'd seen and done in this war, he was still the Doctor and not one to refuse a genuine plea for assistance._

_The lift hummed and finally came to a jerky halt. The doors shuddered open to reveal a large room, crowded with the looming shapes of disused manufacturing equipment and hundreds of refugees. Haunted eyes turned to watch them walk through the camp._

_They stopped outside a poorly constructed tent. One of his guides went inside it briefly and returned with an older woman in tow. She stripped off the sterile gloves she'd been wearing and offered him her hand._

_"You're the Doctor?" she asked, giving him a dubious look as though she'd been expecting someone more impressive._

_He nodded. "Perhaps you can shed some light on the situation here. Some sort of emergency in the camp? My escorts haven't been the most forthcoming with details."_

_"Yes," she said and tipped her head slightly to one side, staring at him with unnerving intensity. "The... emergency..." Her face twitched._

_Alarmed, the Doctor stepped away from her. As he did so, he became aware of how quiet it had become in the cavernous space. He could just make out a low, pulsing sound reverberating through the floor. He knew that sound._

_"Doc-tor." The woman was still speaking, her eyes almost confused as she struggled to form the syllables. "Ex. Ter. Min. Ate." The skin on her forehead rippled disconcertingly and a Dalek eyestalk erupted through the flesh there._

_The Doctor recoiled in horror and spun to run away but they had him surrounded. Every single one of the refugees, children and adults alike, had been poisoned by the Daleks' nanogenes, transformed into their undead agents. There was nowhere for him to run to._

_"Ex-ter-min-ate. EX-TER-MIN-ATE. EXTERMINATE," they repeated ominously and closed in._

"John, John!" Someone was shaking him.

_"EXTERMINATE." Hands clutching at him from all sides._

"Exterminate!" he gasped, sitting up abruptly. His heart was racing. It took him a moment to realise where he was.

"Shh...shh... You're okay. You're safe. You're with me," Elizabeth whispered at his side, stroking his hair.

"I'm all right," he told her eventually, but he was still shaking a little as he laid down again. 

—

"I thought we could go to a matinee this afternoon. The Polaris has that new Humphrey Bogart picture playing. It'd be good to get our minds off everything for a few hours," Elizabeth suggested over breakfast.

 _The Treasure of the Sierra Madre_ did indeed make an excellent distraction, though while they were watching it, John couldn't quite shake the feeling that he'd seen it before. The film was a popular choice that Sunday afternoon, it seemed. They'd been lucky to get tickets; the screening had been nearly full.

"I met him once, you know," John said as they walked out of the cinema. The temperature had dropped while they were inside and now tiny snow flurries drifted gently to the ground around them.

"Who?" Elizabeth was still adjusting her scarf.

"Bogart." He grinned and set his fedora on his head at a rakish angle, imitating the film star.

"You didn't." Elizabeth laughed. "When was this?"

"September, 1953," he said. "Outside of a club in New York City."

Elizabeth gave him a questioning look.

He blinked. "Thirty-five, sorry." John laughed to cover his slip of the tongue. "Wouldn't make much sense the other way."

"What were you doing in New York?" Elizabeth asked, curious. Thanks in part to his war injury, John very rarely talked about his past. He'd have been just twenty years old in 1935. It was hard for her to picture him that young.

"I don't quite remember. I was with some friends, I think. Jaime and... Polly and Ben." He frowned, something about the memory didn't seem right.

"But you met Humphrey Bogart," she prompted, hoping he'd elaborate. 

"He asked me for a light while we were waiting on Polly, who'd forgotten her hat inside, but none of us smoked. I think we spoke for a few minutes, that was all," John said, faint details of the encounter returning to him. He recalled there'd also been some business about a lost artefact, a trombone, and a talking fish, but that was probably just his mind jumbling things up again. "Didn't realise who he was at the time. Figured it out later when I saw _Casablanca_."

"Is New York anything like it is in the films? I've always wanted to see it." Elizabeth's voice was wistful. She'd always meant to travel, but life hadn't quite worked out that way.

"It's something else," he said, remembering the maze of skyscrapers in Manhattan. "We'll go someday. Perhaps we'll have a chance to when we visit London." He'd promised before to introduce her to the city of his birth. One of these days he'd have to figure out a way to make good on that promise. He could survive the crowds of London or New York with Beth at his side.

"That'd be nice," she replied and leaned against him as they headed back to their car.

—

If the Mounties had any leads so far, they weren't sharing them with the rest of the town. The two days since Mayhew's body had been discovered had bred one unsubstantiated rumour after another, with nary an official comment. Every single one of John's clinic patients on Monday morning had wanted to talk about it, regardless of their connection - or lack thereof - to the dead men. As a result, John was feeling rather irritable when he looked in at the bookshop over lunch.

Mr. Frasier was manning the front when he came in, perched in his customary armchair behind the counter with a book in hand and John's dog at his feet.

"Hello, sir. Is Elizabeth upstairs or in the back?"

The old man pointed behind him to the closed office door and kept reading. Chesterton at least acknowledged him with a friendly thump of his tail, but didn't get up. John shook his head and went to see his wife.

He found her writing sums in a thick ledger and consulting a small adding machine on her desk. She was frowning. Bookkeeping was her least favourite task at the shop.

"Hungry?" he asked, holding up the brown paper sack he'd acquired on his way over. Yellow Fork was just large enough to support a small deli and occasionally he would stop in as a treat. The quality of their sandwiches tended to vary with the train schedule, so the trick was to go when the fresh produce and meat had just arrived.

"Famished." She accepted the food gratefully, clearing a space on the desk for them to eat.

"How's your morning been?" he asked, gesturing to the ledger.

"About as you'd expect. But I'm nearly finished. Yours?"

"Similar," he said with a small sigh.

She nodded and swallowed a bite of her sandwich. "The only break I had this morning was when Ernie dropped by. He's worried about Graham Crossly. Says no one's heard from him since the memorial on Friday and he was supposed to be at a meeting with the company officials yesterday afternoon."

"After the show that chap put on at the service, I'm surprised." John raised his eyebrows.

"I know. And now Ernie's got me worried about him." She bit her lip.

"I'm sure he'll turn up." John was trying to be reassuring, but given recent events, it was hard not to be concerned. 

He thought about Graham Crossly and his argument with Charlie Billings the rest of the afternoon.

—

_The ocean of stars around him went on forever. Tiny pinpricks of light against an endless black canvas. It should have been beautiful, and it was, in a way, but something terrible had happened here._

_The three sister stars which had formed the basis of the system that called this region of the galaxy home were gone. Or, more accurately, they'd never existed. The Daleks had destroyed the stellar nursery where they'd formed, seven billion years ago, and thus prevented the eventual development of a powerful space-faring race. All because their technology might have been useful to the Time Lords._

_The Time Lords didn't care about this system though. And because they didn't, no resources had been allocated to restore the timeline. The Doctor wasn't even supposed to be here._

_In a way, this was a test. He'd disobeyed direct orders to come to this particular desolate void, and he hadn't been forcibly recalled yet. If he could right this wrong without their interference, it meant that he really had managed to escape their control._

_The Doctor touched the bandage covering the side of his head gingerly. The wound caused by a Dalek casing exploding in his face was mostly healed by now, but it had left a nasty scar. A small price to pay for his freedom though._

John opened his eyes to see the dim outline of wooden rafters on the ceiling. Elizabeth was snoring softly beside him. Moving as silently as possible, he slid out of bed. Shoving his feet inside his boots without bothering to lace them, he grabbed his coat and stepped outside.

Overhead, the full moon had already set, leaving the bright river of the milky way to share the sky with the drifting green and red curtain of the aurora borealis to the north.

If he held still, John almost couldn't feel the cold on his bare skin, though he knew it must be below freezing. He lost track of how long he stood there, watching the night sky. Elizabeth found him in the morning, asleep on the sofa, still wearing his coat, with Chesterton curled up next to him.

—

For the people of Yellow Fork, moderate concern turned to full-blown worry when Graham Crossly failed to appear for two more days. A neighbour had checked his house and found it empty, yet his car was still in the drive. It was as though he'd simply vanished.

One missing man would have been enough to cause widespread conspiracies and demands for action in a town this primed for civil unrest. Talk had already begun suggesting that the mining company was attempting to conceal something about the accident by silencing the survivors and anyone who challenged their official story. But it soon became obvious that Crossly hadn't been the only disappearance in Yellow Fork that week. No one had seen Ernie Pickering since Monday afternoon either. 

Elizabeth was sick with worry. When Ernie hadn't come by on Tuesday morning, she'd assumed he'd gotten caught up gossiping with one of his customers and would be back the next day, full of apologies and fresh news. He didn't come on Wednesday either though, and his barbershop was closed. She'd checked the flat where he lived above his shop but he wasn't home. His car was gone from its space behind the building as well.

To ease his wife's mind on the matter and, frankly, to ease his own, John offered to go see if Ernie had gone out to the small hunting shack he occasionally used beyond the western edge of town. He had a patient visit scheduled near there on Thursday morning anyway.

He had an ugly feeling that if there was anything to find out there, it wouldn't be something he wanted Elizabeth to have to see.

—

It had started to snow again. Fat, wet flakes plopped against the car's windscreen and melted. As he turned down the narrow gravel road that led further into the wilderness, he made a mental note to be mindful of ice later; the slush on the roads would freeze solid once the sun dropped behind the mountain.

This far from town, the roads were less maintained and the long shadows of the adjacent mountains allowed more snow to accumulate and linger. He drove through a half tunnel of white, evergreen sentinels lining the route. Partially buried distance markers every kilometre or so were the only indication of where he was. John had to steer carefully to avoid rough bits in the winding road. As he came around a tight curve, he thought he saw the dark shape of another car up ahead of him, pulled over to the side.

The migraine struck without warning. One moment, John was slowing to approach the other vehicle, the next, he was in blinding pain.

The yellow automobile's front right tyre slipped out of a rut worn in the road and skidded sideways. The wheel jerked out of John's hands at just the wrong second and grabbing it again, he over-corrected, sending the car spinning in the opposite direction. There it collided with a tree, overturned, and finally came to rest on its side. The engine stalled and the cooling metal ticked noisily in the frigid air.

—

_The forest was grey and foreboding. Dark naked branches twisted and rose like gnarled claws from the solid shapes scattered around him, disappearing into the mist. The thick fog made it impossible to see much beyond the nearest trees and muffled any sounds, creating the illusion of total isolation. The thumping of his own hearts and ragged breathing effectively drowned out anything else he might have heard, but he knew he was being followed._

_"Show yourself!" he shouted, tired of running like a scared rabbit from an invisible enemy. "If you're going to kill me then do it. I've had enough of these childish games!"_

_Silence._

_He turned slowly in a circle where he stood, panting heavily. Sweat beaded on his skin despite the chill in the air. The forest was eerily still around him, nothing moved, not even the air._

_It began so subtly that he didn’t notice it at first, a gradual lightening of the gloom out of the corner of his eye that slowly took on an amorphous shape just visible between the trees. The Doctor turned to face it, squaring his shoulders defiantly._

_The entity didn’t speak, exactly, but he could feel a definite change in the atmosphere around him that coincided with the faint flicker of its ill-defined silhouette. His ears popped and head throbbed as a wave of something insubstantial passed over him. The barely perceptible glow did not move closer as the two beings regarded one another from a distance._

_The Doctor felt something wet trickling over his upper lip and raised a hand to wipe it away automatically. The sharp metallic scent caught his attention; he looked down at his fingers to find blood on them._

_“Is that it then?” he asked, voice low and dangerously calm. He was afraid but didn’t want to show it. Not now._

_His answer came in the form of a second wave, more powerful this time, and the force of it nearly staggered him to his knees. He cried out in pain but held firm. There’d been a telepathic element that time, but his mental defences were able to repel it._

_"Not as easy as it was with the others, is it?" he said, panting as he looked up again at his adversary._

_The space between the trees was empty now though._

_The Doctor spun around, searching the clearing for any sign of the entity. Only darkness greeted him. His satchel thumped against his side when he paused, holding his breath to listen._

_Tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and then sharp, hot pain lanced through his skull. The Doctor crumpled to the ground._

—

John woke to find himself face down in a snowbank, a few metres away from his car, which was tipped on its side in the same embankment that ran alongside the roadway. He pulled himself to his feet gingerly, brushing snow off his clothes. His head was throbbing and standing made him feel dizzy and a little bit queasy, so he paused, hunched awkwardly for a minute or two until the feeling passed. Breathing hurt, but not so much that he thought he'd broken any ribs. He walked stiffly over to examine his car.

The windscreen was cracked, but not shattered, so he hadn't been thrown from the vehicle in the crash, but he couldn't remember climbing out either. The radiator had taken the brunt of the impact and was slowly leaking coolant, but otherwise it seemed in fair shape. Neither of the axles looked damaged so it was likely drivable, but it was probably going to take more than himself to get it on its wheels again.

That was a problem. He was alone on an infrequently used bit of forestry service road and the snow that had been melting earlier was starting to stick. Only Elizabeth knew he was out here. When he didn't return on time, she'd know to send a search party, but it could still be hours before anyone found him.

Except, _was_ he alone? There'd been a second car on the road just before he crashed, he was certain of it. He looked around and sure enough, there it was, the same black sedan he'd glimpsed earlier. John walked toward it, waving his arms and calling out.

"Hello! Is there anyone there? I've had an accident with my car," he called. The falling snow muffled his voice.

The black car was empty when he got to it, key left in the ignition. It hadn't been abandoned very long though. He felt the bonnet and it was still somewhat warm.

"Hello?" Nothing.

Fading tracks in the snow in front of the black car suggested that there'd been a second vehicle here. Maybe the other driver had trouble on the road and had gotten a ride back to civilisation to arrange for a tow. Out of curiosity, John got in and tried the starter. The engine rumbled to life, surprising him. Looking back at his own forlorn car in the mirror, an idea occurred to him. He kept a chain in the boot in case of an emergency such as this.

Taking care to be gentle with the black car, John put the transmission into reverse and backed it up to within two metres of his own, set the brake, and got out to work on attaching the chain. With some quick planning and an uncomfortable amount of elbow grease, John was able to right his battered Ford and pull it out of the ditch, using the stranger's car for the leverage he needed.

He returned the black sedan to where he'd found it and reached over to open the glove box, looking for something to write a note of thanks to his unexpected benefactor. The metal door stuck and when it opened a packet of papers fell to the floor. He bent to pick them up and his heart nearly skipped a beat when he read the name on the registration. 

_Ernest T. Pickering._


	7. Mad In Some Way

_"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way or another."_

By adding antifreeze from the emergency canister he kept in the boot and driving cautiously - he had to stop twice to let the engine cool to prevent it overheating - John was able to limp his damaged car back to town. He went to the police first. No reason not to, their small outpost was one of the first buildings that one encountered coming into Yellow Fork from that direction, and there was only so much daylight left to conduct a search. The sooner the proper authorities were notified about what he’d discovered, the better.

Corporal Briggs at the front desk was very interested to take his report and let John use the telephone to call his wife while he relayed his information to the Sergeant. John asked Elizabeth to meet him at the mechanic's shop, telling her he'd had a bit of an accident in the snow. The news that he'd also found her friend's car abandoned on the side of the road could wait until he saw her in person.

When he pulled into the tiny yard in front of Bear Auto Repair and Tire, the double garage doors were open, both brightly lit bays currently occupied by cars, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else in queue. Elizabeth was already there waiting for him, leaning against the front fender of an ancient brown automobile, arms crossed tightly over her coat, snowflakes clinging to her hair and shoulders. As soon as he stepped out of the car, she enveloped him in a firm embrace and began checking him over for injuries.

John tried not to wince when her search brushed his sore ribs and held up his hands to ward off further examination. “I’m fine. A few bumps and bruises, that’s all. Ol' Bessie had the worst of it,” he said, gesturing to the banged up front end of their car.

“I can see that. What happened?” she asked.

“Lost traction out on that service road past the turning for Fairy Lake. Tried to steer out of it, but the car spun on the snow, wound up hitting a tree instead.” He shook his head, and promptly regretted the motion when it hurt.

The pain must’ve shown in his face because Elizabeth gave him another concerned look. "Are you sure you're all right?"

“It's just a headache,” he assured her, squeezing his eyes shut for a few seconds before resuming his explanation. "Could've been much worse. It took some doing to get the car on the road again, but at least I was able to drive back into town afterwards."

John was already editing himself to avoid worrying her and he hadn't even gotten to the bad part of his story yet. He put a hand on her arm, steeling himself for the far more difficult conversation to come. “Listen, Beth, I need to tell you something…”

His sentence was interrupted by the arrival of a heavyset man in a grease-stained boilersuit with the name 'Franklin' embroidered on the pocket. John had to temporarily redirect his attention to arranging for car repairs. They entrusted Bessie to the care of the mechanic and were given an estimate that their car would be ready by Friday afternoon at the latest.

Once the details were settled, Elizabeth and John climbed into her father’s old Packard to drive back to the bookshop. Since they had less than two kilometres to go, John decided to wait until they were home to tell her about Ernie, but she spoke up as soon as he shut his door.

"You had something else to tell me?" she asked, starting the car and reversing out onto the empty street.

"Ah, yes, I did." John hesitated, wishing there was a less alarming way to say what needed to be said. He let her focus on driving for a moment before delivering his unsettling news. Then he cleared his throat and plunged forward. "While I was out there this afternoon, I found Ernie’s car."

“You did?" The old car rattled to a sudden halt. He had her undivided attention now. "Where? Why didn’t you say so earlier? Is Ernie okay?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see Ernie. His car was parked just ahead of where I had my accident. It looked like someone had left it there recently though. I’ve told the police; they’re going to search the area,” he said.

Elizabeth bit her lip and thought for a few seconds, visibly quelling the panic that this information had inspired. “You didn’t make it out to the hunting cabin, did you?” Her voice was hopeful as she resumed driving, her knuckles tight on the steering wheel.

“No. And it’s possible he could have walked to it from there if he was feeling determined.” _Not likely_ , he didn’t say, but still possible. “I looked around for any sign of him, but I couldn't stay for too long because I didn’t want to risk getting stuck out there myself. Wasn’t sure how far I’d get with the car banged up.”

Elizabeth took an unsteady breath and collected herself. “This is probably just a silly misunderstanding. They'll find him at the cabin and he’ll wonder why everyone’s so upset because he thought he’d left a note. There’s no real reason to think anything bad has happened to him,” she said.

She pulled the car up next to the shed behind the bookshop where the Packard was normally stored and sat staring blankly at the gauges on the dash. Unshed tears threatened to spill past her dark lashes.

“I’m sure we’ll hear more soon,” John said optimistically, hoping she was correct.

—

Elizabeth answered the telephone when it rang early Friday morning. 

They’d spent the night in the spare bedroom at her father’s flat rather than risk the icy roads back to their cabin in a nearly twenty year old automobile. John was still getting dressed, but Elizabeth had been up fretting over her missing friend for at least half an hour.

He followed her out into the living room and watched her take the call. She spoke a few words into the receiver and then sat down abruptly, her face draining of colour as she listened to the caller. A ghastly knot of fear formed in John's gut.

“Yes, thank you,” Elizabeth said woodenly into the telephone. She replaced the handset on its cradle gently and promptly burst into tears. 

John quickly gathered her into his arms, letting her sob against his shoulder. "I'm here, love. I'm so sorry," he murmured into her hair as she cried. He didn’t need for her to say it aloud to know what had happened.

Ernie Pickering was dead.

—

News of the latest tragedy travelled fast. Ernie's death was a terrible shock to the small community, and not just because he was well liked by nearly everyone in town. Until now, everyone who'd died had been in the mine at the time of the incident. Therefore it had been at least somewhat plausible that they'd died as a result of their injuries. Ernie Pickering ran a barbershop on Main Street; he'd never been inside a mine in his life. 

His body was brought back to town by the Mounted Police just after dawn that morning and delivered to Dr. Marshall for an immediate post mortem examination. He'd been found less than half a kilometre from his abandoned car. If John hadn’t crashed, or it hadn’t been snowing, he might’ve spotted him.

The discovery lead to another, more intensive search for Graham Crossly in the area near his home.

After a frosty night, the mercurial springtime weather had shifted, leaving them with clear skies, a warming breeze, and melting snow. Constable Perry found Crossly's thawing body half-buried in snow beneath the trees behind his house just after noon. He'd likely been dead for days.

Five fatalities since the explosion at the mine, two of whom hadn't been involved directly with the incident at all, the mounting evidence began to take on a very sinister aspect indeed. There was a killer at large in Yellow Fork.

—

John called out of work to stay with Elizabeth. Dr. Eugene didn't really protest, even though this meant he'd be the only physician handling clinical duties while Dr. Marshall was busy performing two autopsies. Half their patients that day cancelled their appointments, too afraid to leave their homes with a murderer on the loose.

The besieged mood that followed the reports of Pickering and Crossly's deaths seemed nearly ubiquitous. The streets of downtown Yellow Fork were quiet and eerily empty. Rather than open the shop for nonexistent customers, John and Mr. Frasier spent much of the day making tea and trying to make pleasant conversation to console Elizabeth.

She'd cried for an hour in the morning, then wiped her face and set about aggressively cleaning everything in sight. Every thirty minutes or so, she'd pause and look like she was about to start sobbing again, only to shake herself and redouble her efforts at scrubbing. John quickly gave up trying to convince her to stop and attempted to make himself useful instead, dusting and straightening displays on the tops of shelves in the shop.

When the garage called to say the replacement radiator had been installed successfully, John decided to retrieve their car on foot. He could've gotten Elizabeth to drive him over in the Packard, but he wanted the fresh air and the chance to stretch his legs to help him think.

He clipped Chesterton's leash to his collar and went out. Ches had picked up on the tense atmosphere inside and had been restlessly pacing between the three members of his human family all day. He responded enthusiastically to the prospect of a walk and spent most of their journey alternately pulling at the leash or stopping to sniff at everything they passed along the way.

John hadn't known Ernie as well as his wife had, but he'd liked the man. Anyone who'd known him had liked him. He'd had that sort of affable personality that one couldn't help but respond positively to. The idea that anyone would want to kill Ernie Pickering was almost unthinkable.

Mr. Crossly, John could almost understand, the flamboyant union man had almost as many enemies as friends right now and violence over labour disagreements was hardly unheard of. Crossly being killed might've added credence to the theory that the mine company was involved, but it was hardly a rational act if their intention was to discourage inquiry into the incident. Crossly and Ernie had been close friends, which was the only connection John could think to draw between the two men's deaths. Otherwise, what was there? Had Ernie seen something he shouldn't have? And would the deaths stop there?

The worry that this might have nothing to do with the mine company or the explosion gnawed away at John. He hadn't been able to prevent the first three deaths and didn't know what he could do to protect Elizabeth from a killer he'd never seen. This wasn't a disease he could treat nor was there an obvious villain he could fight off. She'd already been hurt by the death of her friend. He couldn't bear for any real harm to come to her. The thought of losing her scared him more than anything. He anxiously twisted his wedding band with his thumb as he walked.

Another concern that he'd been trying to suppress was for his own health. His migraines were definitely getting worse - far more frequent in the very least. He'd had headaches like these before, but never so often, and these had come with chunks of missing time after each one. There might be something seriously wrong with him. He'd been lucky that the latest one had only resulted in superficial damage to their car and himself. He could easily have been killed had the attack occurred on a more dangerous bit of road. 

—

_"It will never work," she told him, her gaze never leaving the viewscreen before them. "Their sensor grid will detect our presence before we even arrive."_

_"Since when has that ever stopped us?" he countered, feeling belligerent for once._

_Finally, she looked at him, and her eyes were dark and serious. "They've erased half our fleet in that sector already."_

_"I know. But they can't erase me," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "Not without endangering their own existence."_

_"They might try." For a moment, Romana's expression hinted that there was more she wanted to say, but she held back._

_"Then this will all be over rather quickly, won't it?"_

—

On Saturday evening, there was a union meeting held at the Ajax Saloon. The majority there voted to give formal notice that a work stoppage would go into effect in 72 hours unless and until the company adequately addressed their concerns regarding safety provisions in the mine, which included satisfactorily answering the allegations that it was responsible for the five suspicious deaths since the incident.

Upon hearing of this latest development, the Redfern Mountain Mining Corporation immediately put in a call to the Provincial Labour Authority to request that the proposed strike be declared illegal.

Sensing the situation was about to get out of hand, the mayor of Yellow Fork, Ray Yearling, tried to step in, offering to oversee negotiations to prevent a stoppage, but feelings were running too high in the community for much progress on that front. The company refused to bargain until the labour board ruled on its challenge and the union felt Yearling was too sympathetic to the company to deal with them fairly. Several heated words were exchanged in the tavern and over the telephone wires, but any official governmental arbitration of the issue would have to wait until after the weekend had passed.

—

John was due back at the hospital on Sunday afternoon. He went in early to speak with Dr. Eugene about his symptoms before his shift.

"I wouldn't ask unless I felt it was important, Alan. I'm afraid I may be a danger to myself and others if I can't get these headaches under control."

Dr. Eugene nodded and gestured for him to have a seat on the examination table.

"Have you noticed any difficulties with motor coordination? Dizzy spells, numbness, tingling?" he asked.

John shook his head. "Nothing like that. I've experienced blurred vision and a light aura at the onset of the migraines, but that's not unusual. It's the frequency and intensity that have changed."

"How long has it been this bad?" Dr. Eugene asked, shining a pen light into his eyes.

John estimated the days in his head. "Only about two weeks, started the night after the explosion, actually. I've had four attacks since then. It's been nearly every few days, like clockwork. Used to happen once in a blue moon, and usually I'd have ample warning."

As he spoke, he realised that each of his recent migraines had roughly coincided with one of the mystery deaths. His aching head was four for five at predicting homicide. That was damned alarming. He could feel his own heart start to thump harder in his chest.

"I'd like to have an x-ray or two to rule a few things out," Dr. Eugene was saying. "It may simply be a reaction to environmental pressures, over-work, inadequate sleep. It's been a rather trying couple weeks for all of us."

John nodded and followed the other doctor down the corridor into another room. He sat obediently before the emitter and waited as Dr. Eugene prepared the blank film cartridges. When those were in place, he had to position his head carefully into the target frame and hold perfectly still while each film was taken.

The process made his pulse race even faster. He wasn't used to assuming the role of a patient. Alan treated him with just as much courtesy and professionalism as one might expect from a colleague and a friend, but the situation still made John decidedly uncomfortable and strangely anxious. Heaven forbid it did turn out that there was something seriously wrong with him. He'd have to wait a day to find out though; the hospital had a contract with a photography studio in town to develop their x-ray films and his case wasn't urgent.

Talking with Dr. Eugene afterwards, John was able to get confirmation that Crossly and Pickering's deaths had shared the same troubling symptoms as the three miners. Lab reports on the first few deaths had also come back negative for any known toxins, but that only meant it hadn't been something they could test for.

On weekends the hospital only saw emergency cases, so for the most part, the staff used those days to see to other tasks, like paperwork. John spent most of the afternoon reviewing the stack of laboratory reports that had arrived in the mail along with the post mortem blood work. It wasn't a terribly difficult chore, but it was rather time consuming. At least it kept his mind off thoughts of murderers and worst case scenarios.

Just as he was nearing the bottom of the pile, the telephone on his desk rang. He answered it warily.

The caller was Mrs. Abigail Vaughn, a native woman whom John knew a little. Both she and her husband worked for the forestry service. She wondered if he or Dr. Eugene might come out to see her, saying she'd had a mishap hauling firewood and thought she might've broken her ankle. Her husband wasn't due home until morning and she was hardly fit to drive. John told her he'd be there directly.

After a quick word with the town's switchboard operator to let her know where to reach him, should another emergency call come in while he was out, John gathered a few extra supplies for his kit and headed out to his car.

The Vaughns lived in the ranger station perched more than halfway up the side of the mountainous ridge that separated Fairy Lake to the south from Redfern Lake to the north. Getting to the cabin was fairly treacherous due to the location, but the view from their wrap-around porch was impressive and well-suited to its purpose as a lookout point.

John parked at a wide spot near the treeline once the narrow dirt road became too steep to manage safely in his car and continued on foot. He'd already had one accident that week; he didn't want to risk another.

A rough trail snaked up the mountainside, providing a more direct route to his destination. Picking his way carefully up the rocky slope, John could easily see how even an experienced hiker like Mrs. Vaughn might slip here. He was thankful for the warm sunshine on his back. In poor weather the approach would be nigh impossible. He hoped it wouldn't be necessary to bring Mrs. Vaughn back down with him to treat her ankle.

He was sweating and breathing heavily when he finally reached the lonely outpost. Only then did John allow himself to look around. From this vantage point, the whole valley of Yellow Fork lay before him in the distance. If he turned around he could see both lakes at once, pristine mirrors reflecting blue sky and rugged mountains in the late afternoon sun. Behind him stood a small log cabin with a red roof, long porch, and large windows, raised up on a support frame to give it an even greater height advantage over the terrain.

John climbed the stairs to the porch and rapped his knuckles on the varnished wooden front door. He was greeted by a friendly, "Come in, please!" from a hoarse female voice.

Inside, his patient sat beside a tidy hearth on a canvas camp chair with her left leg propped up on a stool. She was a sturdy woman in her mid-forties, wearing a blue flannel jacket and dark khaki trousers, her long black hair secured neatly in a bun at the nape of her neck. She gave John a pained smile.

"Dr. Foreman. So good of you to come. I know it can be quite a challenge to get up here."

"That's quite all right, Mrs. Vaughn, I don't mind making the trip. Let's have a look at that ankle, shall we?" John located another camp chair and brought it over so that he could sit while he examined her injury.

Mrs. Vaughn leaned forward and regarded him with keen interest as he gingerly prodded the extended limb. It looked badly bruised but it wasn't particularly swollen yet. She didn't flinch or cry out in pain when he manipulated the joint. Based on her lack of reaction alone, he doubted that she'd fractured it.

"Can you press against my palm?" he asked, putting his hand on the sole of her foot. She did so without complaint. "Good." John frowned slightly. He turned to look at her face and caught her staring intently at him. A peculiar feeling trickled down his spine and he noticed a tell-tale glowing halo had formed around the bare electric bulb affixed to the ceiling. _Not again._

"Well, I've some good news for you, Mrs. Vaughn. I don't believe it's broken," he said hastily, covering his unease. "Keep it elevated and try not to put weight on it for a few days and you should be good as new in no time." He smiled and a needle-sharp stab of pain blossomed behind his right eye. The smile wavered slightly.

"I can give you something for the pain if you like," he said, standing abruptly and a little unsteadily. Mrs. Vaughn reached for his arm, but he'd already begun to move away from her.

"Are you all right, Dr. Foreman?" she asked, concern in her voice as he fumbled with his bag, searching for his medication.

"Oh fine, never better," he lied through gritted teeth, throbbing pressure building steadily in his head.

His fingers closed around the correct bottle finally and he snatched it up. He shook out a dozen pills into his hand and transferred most of them to a small waxed paper envelope. Turning his back on his patient for a few seconds, he surreptitiously swallowed the remaining two. He set the envelope onto his abandoned chair.

"Take them as needed, try not to exceed one pill every six hours though," he instructed and quickly gathered up his hat and bag to leave. 

"Going so soon?" Mrs. Vaughn asked, looking somewhat alarmed.

"Yes, so sorry, I've only just remembered that I promised another patient that I'd drop in on them today and it's nearly five o'clock already." _Hat on head, bag in hand, pretend everything is normal for just a moment longer. Keep breathing,_ he told himself.

"But you've only just arrived," she protested again and moved to get up.

John stepped swiftly backwards toward the door. "Very sorry. Must dash. Really. Stay off that foot for now and do come to see me next week."

He stumbled out of the door and practically ran from the building. How he managed to make it down the trail and back to his car without passing out or breaking his neck was nothing short of a minor miracle. He sat in the sedan with his head in his hands for some time until the pain subsided enough for him to drive, then he made his way slowly back into town in the twilight.

It wasn't until he'd made it to the hospital that the horrifying thought occurred to him. Every time he'd had a migraine recently, someone had died. 

—

_"Doctor, get down!" she screamed and shoved him out of the way._

_The blast hit her instead. He saw her face as it happened. Watched her eyes widen in shock, as the filaments of light, like cracks in her skin, spread out through her entire body, glowing brighter and brighter until she shone like a star going supernova. Then, just like that, she was gone._

_The Doctor didn't have time to acknowledge her death, it happened so fast, and if he didn't move quickly, he'd likely be next. So he did the only thing he could under the circumstances. He ran._

The woman in the dream had been a friend, John thought. But all he could remember about her was the way her eyes looked right through him as she died; he didn't even know her name. He stared down at the open journal page on his desk and wondered if she'd been real. 

Across the room, alone in their bed, Elizabeth tossed fitfully under the blankets, lost in troublesome dreams of her own. 

It was a long time before he made it back to sleep.

—

There was a knock at John's office door on Monday morning as he was getting ready for his first appointment. He called for whoever it was to come in, expecting it to be one of the nurses. The door opened to reveal Dr. Eugene, flanked by two uniformed constables. He had rarely seen his colleague look so grim.

"Dr. Foreman, these gentlemen would like to have a word with you. Mrs. Vaughn has just been found dead." 

Two hours later, John sat in a tiny, poorly lit room at the police station, repeating for the fourth time an account of his visit with Mrs. Vaughn and his exact whereabouts for the remainder of the previous evening to a stony-faced sergeant and accompanying constable when they were interrupted by the arrival of a second constable. The new uniformed man motioned for the sergeant to follow him and the pair stepped outside to speak.

John glanced at the remaining Mountie. "Would you like me to continue, or shall we wait for them?"

Constable Fontaine looked uncomfortable; he tugged at the bottom of his red tunic. "Wait, please," he said, his accent betraying a francophone upbringing.

The sergeant returned a few minutes later carrying a plain file folder and sat down at the table across from John. His whole demeanour had changed. Now he seemed more alert, almost expectant.

"We put a wire in to the British authorities a few days ago. Just routine procedure, you understand. You'd said you'd served as a Captain in the Medical Corps during the war. But it seems the British Army's never heard of you, Dr. Foreman. Care to explain that?" Sgt. Brannock's delivery was deceptively casual.

"What? There must be some mistake. I've got my discharge papers at home, I can prove it to you if necessary." His war record hardly seemed relevant right now, but the realisation that this meant they'd been investigating him sent an icy spur of fear down John's spine. Worse still, the army's typical bureaucratic incompetence had made it look like he had something to hide. "What's this got to do with Mrs. Vaughn's death?"

The grey-haired policeman didn't answer him. "You were the only physician on duty the nights when Mr. Goodman and Mr. Hodges passed away, were you not?"

More fear. "You know I was."

"Is there anything about either of those nights that you'd like to tell us, Dr. Foreman?"

"I've already told you everything I know," John said, meeting the man's gaze. His throat felt dry.

"How about the night of March the 11th? Where were you then?"

"That would've been the Friday before last? I went to the memorial service that afternoon, then I spent that night at home with my wife."

"You didn't go anywhere else that evening?" the Mountie prompted.

John tried to swallow and failed. "I was at home all night," he repeated.

"You didn't visit a Mrs. Edna Mosley that evening after the service?"

"Sorry. Yes, I may have. She's a regular patient of mine." John was struggling to keep the anxiety from showing in his face, but he knew from experience that he was terrible at hiding anything. 

"Bill Mayhew lived very near to Mrs. Mosley," the policeman continued. "Did you look in on him that night as well?" Again the question was presented very lightly.

"No. I'd intended to, but I was feeling ill, so I headed home instead." Perfectly truthful, even if he did omit the exact nature of his illness. 

"And March the 14th?"

"At home. With my wife. The _entire_ evening."

"Certain of that?"

"Positive." John crossed his arms.

"You were the one who reported finding Mr. Pickering's car on Thursday, correct?"

"Yes, of course I was. You were there," John snapped irritably.

Brannock held out his hands in a placating gesture. "I'm just trying to keep the facts straight for the record." He nodded to the young constable taking notes in the corner.

"You can't seriously be suggesting that I had anything to do with these deaths. Ernie Pickering was a close personal friend of my wife's and four of the others were my patients. I've dedicated myself to saving lives, not taking them." There was no disguising the anger in his voice.

"I'm not suggesting anything, Mr. Foreman. I'm simply asking a few questions." The sergeant folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair.

"Doctor," John corrected the policeman under his breath.

Brannock quirked an eyebrow at him, but didn't reply. John suspected the slip had been intentional, meant to needle at him to provoke a response. Foolishly, he had taken the bait; he glared at the other man from across the table.

"Tell me again about when you last saw Mrs. Vaughn." The interrogation had cycled back around again to the subject of the latest body. John clenched his jaw and answered as calmly as he could.

They went round and round like that for another four hours, until John was no longer certain what he believed had happened.

The young doctor couldn't really blame the Mounties for focusing on him. Six people had died already and the community was in a state of panic. John was one of the few people who had some connection to each of the victims and his medical knowledge made him a more attractive suspect since they still didn't know how the murderer was killing these people. To make matters worse, thanks to his migraines, he honestly couldn't account for significant passages of time during the critical window of opportunity for all but one of the deaths.

What if the two phenomenon were linked? _Could_ he somehow be causing these deaths without realising it? It was a mad idea, the sort of thing that might happen in his worst nightmares. And yet... 

Despite their persistence in interviewing him, the police had no solid evidence to link John to the deaths, so they eventually had to let him go.

Elizabeth drove him home from the station. Dr. Eugene had called her after the Mounties took John away for questioning. She'd collected their car and spent the next several hours arguing with Corporal Briggs in the lobby, insisting that she be allowed to see her husband immediately. John had never seen her this angry before. She was practically spitting with rage.

"Of all the ridiculous, asinine, outrageous things to suggest," she ranted. "After everything you've done to keep the people of this town healthy, what on earth are they thinking, dragging you in there and keeping you for hours? They're wasting precious time that they could be spending looking for whoever's doing this." 

John was silent in the passenger seat. He was busy thinking.

Elizabeth pulled the car up alongside the curb in front of the bookshop and set the brake. "I'll be right back. I just need to check on Dad. Don't go anywhere," she said, squeezing his hand.

He nodded and sat waiting, feeling strangely numb to everything happening around him.

It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. Everything was green and bright, with the occasional shadow flitting across the landscape as fluffy white clouds moved swiftly past the majestic mountain peaks to the west. Hardly the setting one might expect for a slaughter.

That's what this was, he realised. A slaughter. The people of Yellow Fork were being eliminated, systematically, one by one. Unless whoever _or whatever_ was killing people was stopped, the deaths would continue until there wasn't anybody left. John was at the centre of it all, though he didn't understand how or why he'd ended up there.

Elizabeth returned with Chesterton in tow. John reached back to push open the passenger side doors for her and slid over to take the driver's seat. He drummed his hands nervously against the steering wheel until the two were settled in the car.

Part of him wanted to tell her to stay in town, keep as far away from him as possible until they could be sure he was safe to be around. Another part of him couldn't bear the thought of her leaving his side again. He'd never in a million years hurt her intentionally, and he'd protect her with his own life if necessary, but things weren't so simple.

What if it was some previously unknown pathogen that seared men's lungs from the inside out? He could be an unwitting carrier, or an unlucky bystander. Perhaps his migraines were a sign that he too would soon succumb to the deadly plague. Or perhaps he'd finally gone completely mad.

He didn't know and that scared him.


	8. Terrible Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a lot of blood, medical stuff, disturbing imagery etc.

_There are some corners of the universe which have bred the most terrible things.  
Things which act against everything we believe in.  
They must be fought._

As John drove, Elizabeth had more to say on the subject of the great injustice that was being perpetuated against him, but gradually her litany of complaints dwindled into shared silence. She spent the remainder of the ten minute drive starring out at the passing trees, her head propped up by her wrist with her elbow on the windowsill. Dark shadows under her eyes revealed the toll the past few days had taken on her. She started slightly when he touched her knee to tell her that they were home.

“Come inside, I can fix supper tonight,” he said gently.

“There isn’t much in the icebox or pantry; I didn’t get a chance to do the shopping today. It’ll have to be tinned meat again,” she said with a frown.

“I’ll find something.” He held the door open for her. “Ches!” he called out behind her.

Chesterton completed his customary circuit of the cabin, pausing only to lift his leg against a tree before trotting in after them.

While John rummaged for ingredients in their small pantry, Elizabeth sat at the kitchen table and fidgeted fretfully with the novelty salt and pepper shakers that had been a wedding gift from a cousin in the States.

“You’ve barely said anything since we left the police station, John,” she said finally, and watched his shoulders tense up under the fabric of his shirt in anticipation of her next question. His back was towards her as he stood at the sink. “Aren’t you going to talk about what happened today?”

He set down the potatoes he’d started to peel and gripped the counter tightly for a second while he collected his thoughts before he turned to look at her. “I’m not sure where to begin," he said. "Mrs. Vaughn called the hospital yesterday afternoon; she’d fallen and sprained her ankle badly, said she thought it might be broken. I saw her for perhaps fifteen minutes, and left sooner than I might have otherwise because I felt another headache coming on. She obviously didn’t heed my instructions to stay off her feet, since she was found this morning by the road leading to Redfern Lake.”

John sighed and came and sat down across from Elizabeth. “I expect the police may ask to speak to you to verify my whereabouts last week. It seems I’ve been one of the few people nearby when most of these mystery deaths have occurred. I can understand why they had questions for me; they’ve little else to go on. But if they think I’ve killed these people, they’ve got the wrong man. Or at least I hope they have.”

“What do mean by that?” Elizabeth looked at him sharply.

"I don't know." John rubbed his neck and avoided her gaze. “I haven’t said anything because I didn’t want to worry you, but I’ve been getting terrible migraines since this all started.”

Elizabeth reached to take his hand. “You should’ve told me,” she said, more kindly than reproachful. “I can’t help you if I don’t know there’s anything wrong.”

He shook his head; he wasn't finished with his confession. “It's more than that. These migraines, they’ve all lined up nearly perfectly with the deaths. Goodman and Hodges both died while I was distracted by an attack. I’d planned to look in on Mayhew after the memorial service but didn’t because I had one outside his house. My accident, right before I found Ernie’s car, that was another. And then again, last night. Whenever it happens, I’m losing bits of time; twenty, thirty minutes where I have absolutely no recall of what’s gone on around me. The only death I haven’t experienced a migraine with was Crossly and even with that I’m starting to question my own memory. I can’t help but think that there must be some connection.”

“Oh, John.” Her grip on his hand tightened. “You can’t think…”

“I don’t know what to think.” He looked at her helplessly. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m safe with you, John. I’d never have married you if I didn’t know that. You’d never hurt me …or anyone else for that matter.”

“That’s not entirely true. In the war, I…” he began.

“The war has been over for nearly four years now. Whatever happened then, whatever you might’ve had to do to protect your own life, that’s hardly a reflection of who you are now,” she argued.

“It was still me, Beth. Not some stranger with my face. I _have_ hurt people before. And I have to live with that knowledge.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds. “Confusion and dissociative episodes are not unheard of symptoms associated with seizures. It’s possible that what I’ve been experiencing have been more than simple migraines. I could be hurting people and not even realise it.”

Elizabeth scoffed. “Without anyone else noticing? Or fighting back? You told me yourself that Rupert hasn’t been able to explain how they’re being killed. What could you possibly be doing?”

He didn’t have a good answer for her. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve accidentally become a carrier for some terrible new disease,” he suggested.

“If that was the case, then more people would’ve died. Think of how many people you see every day. Are all of them, save these select few, immune?”

John opened his mouth to argue further but stopped himself. She was right. He was allowing his fears to cloud his thoughts.

"It still seems extremely unlikely that the timing of this is mere coincidence," he said.

"Maybe whatever it is that the killer is using is something you're uniquely sensitive to," Elizabeth mused. "Like those people who claim they can pick up wireless signals through metal fillings in their teeth."

"This isn't the time for jokes Beth."

"I'm being perfectly serious. Certainly most of them are probably telling stories for the attention, but it could be something like that. Or like how Dad always knows if we’re about to get a storm because his leg aches."

He frowned and considered this. He couldn't deny that a similar thought had already occurred to him earlier. If he was somehow able to detect what was causing the deaths that might explain why he hadn’t felt anything with Crossly - he’d been too far away. But just what good did it do him to know that someone was going to die unless he could prevent it?

“Please tell me you’ve spoken to Rupert or Alan about the headaches though. If you’re having seizures that sounds pretty dangerous.”

John nodded. “I told Alan after the accident. He didn’t seem inclined to assume the worst just yet. I’ll know more tomorrow once the x-ray films come back.”

“Good.” She gave him a watery-eyed smile. “I don’t want anything to happen to you either.”

He squeezed her hand for a long moment and then stood to go back to preparing their supper.

—

_Something was wrong. The camp was too quiet. At last count there were approximately 4,200 refugees stationed here. Where were they all?_

_He’d returned with the supplies, just as he’d promised. He’d only been gone for three days according the TARDIS chronometer; there shouldn’t have been enough time for anyone to find them here. This planet was several systems away from the nearest war zone. If the Daleks had been here, there would’ve been signs of a battle. Instead, it seemed that everyone had simply vanished._

_Wind rattled the bare branches of the trees that encircled the camp. Dry leaves crunched under the Doctor’s feet as he walked through the abandoned settlement. Row after row of empty metal buildings sat eerily silent in the clearing. Finally, as he neared the last shelter, the Doctor spotted a wisp of black smoke rising above the rooftops. He hurried forward only to stop short as he came around the building._

_The scene before him was a ghastly one. Hundreds of refugees standing perfectly still amidst a sea of bodies. No blood or other obvious evidence of fighting, it looked like they’d simply dropped where they stood. Those remaining upright slowly turned their heads to look at the Doctor as one, their expressions blank and emotionless._

—

“Good morning.” John smiled at Carol as he entered the hospital on Tuesday morning. The nurse gave him a strange look and echoed the greeting half-heartedly before hurrying off. John tried not to take the snub personally, but her reaction stung a little. By now most of Yellow Fork must have heard that he’d been interviewed in connection with the deaths.

Dr. Eugene stopped him in the corridor before he made it to his office. He wore an uncomfortable expression. “Morning, Dr. Foreman,” he said. “If you have a few minutes, I’d like to go over your x-rays.” 

“Certainly. Let me just set down my things. I can meet you in your office in a minute.” John’s answering smile was as forced as his friend’s. Good news was rarely accompanied by such a strained opening. He deposited his coat, hat, and bag on his desk and made the short walk down the hall to his colleague’s door with a churning stomach.

Dr. Eugene was shuffling through a stack of files on his desk when he came in. He motioned for him to have a seat. John sat as instructed and tried not to fidget. Alan slid a large manilla envelope out from the stack of files and set it down between them. He made no move to open it, instead folding his hands carefully on the desk.

“The films came back yesterday, but you were otherwise detained at the time.” His expression flickered from polite, professional reserve to friendly concern. “I feel I should tell you first that Rupert and I, we’re on your side. Frankly, it saddens me that anyone could even entertain the idea that you’re capable of such things, but people are scared and scared people will believe just about anything. I’ll be damned if I know what is going on, but I know you’re a good man and a fine doctor.”

John offered him a strained smile in return. “Thank you, Alan. I appreciate your saying so.”

Dr. Eugene cleared his throat and nudged the wire frame of his glasses to straighten them. “Now, I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. I’ve had a look at these x-rays. You’ll be relieved to hear that they don’t show any signs of a tumour or intercranial bleed.”

John let out the breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding.

“However, I did spot something curious that I’m hoping you’ll be able to shed some light on.” He opened the envelope, removed the x-rays, and passed one to John. “Were you aware that you have a bit of metal in your head?”

“What?” John blinked and took the radiograph, holding it up to the lamp to examine it.

It showed the profile taken of his right side. There, just above the faint shadow of ear cartilage on the ghostly image of his skull, was a narrow bright white rectangle, approximately six centimetres long. Reflexively, his hand went to the side of his head to probe for the mysterious bit of metal, but he could only feel the raised bit of scar tissue left over from his war injury. Something about this image pricked the deepest, darkest recesses of his memory, shedding just enough light there to convince him that he ought to know exactly what this was. 

“It appears to be embedded in the bone; it’s visible in all of the films we took,” Dr. Eugene said. “When you told me you’d had a head injury in the war, you were rather understating things. Those are clearly signs of an old skull fracture.” He tapped the image, pointing out the darker jagged lines that intersected the white rectangle. 

“I was hit with shrapnel during an air strike on the field hospital I was stationed at near the end of the war. Spent four months in hospital myself afterwards,” John explained. “They must have missed a bit or been concerned that removing that piece would be more dangerous than leaving it in. I don’t remember much of that time, to be perfectly honest.”

“I’m not surprised. An injury like that, you’d have been lucky to be alive.” Dr. Eugene shook his head in amazement. “I’d say that bit of metal is the most likely cause of your headaches though.”

John nodded.

“You’ve lived with this thing in your head for years and had only occasional problems until very recently, so I’d like to explore pharmaceutical options before we consider more drastic surgical solutions.” 

He grimaced and nodded again. “That would be preferable, yes.”

“What’ve you been taking for the migraines?” 

“Paracetamol and aspirin,” John replied. He’d begun fidgeting anxiously with his wedding ring, without realising it. “It usually helps, but it hasn’t been enough lately.” 

“I’d like you to try Diamox for a little while and see if that helps. I know they’ve only just approved it for sale, but we have some in the pharmacy and all of the literature looks extremely promising for this sort of application.”

He considered this. It wasn’t a bad suggestion, though not without potential for inconvenient side effects. The drug was a diuretic; best case scenario, he’d be trading intense headaches for far more frequent visits to the water closet. “All right.”

Dr. Eugene wrote out the prescription for his friend and handed him the slip of paper. “No aspirin with this stuff,” he cautioned. “Give it a few weeks. If this doesn’t work, we’ll see about contacting a specialist for you.”

“Thank you.” He tucked the prescription into his jacket and stood to leave. “Was there anything else?” he asked; Dr. Eugene was watching him like he wanted to say more.

“No, no, I’ll let you get back to your work,” the older physician dissembled. “Be a relief when they finally catch the bastard,” he added quietly after John had turned to go.

John flinched and nodded emphatically. “Agreed.”

—

That afternoon, hundreds of kilometres away in Vancouver, the Provincial Labour Board met in an emergency session to discuss the Redfern petition. After a brief discussion of the matter, the Board voted 3-2 to deny the company’s request for an emergency injunction against the work stoppage and send a representative to Yellow Fork to investigate the union’s claims of safety violations.

The subsequent telephone calls relaying this decision were met with mixed reactions from the opposing factions in Yellow Fork, but the result was inescapable. As of 9:15 pm on the 22nd of March, 1949, the United Mine Workers of Yellow Fork, British Columbia were officially on strike.

—

“Do you suppose we could use your headaches to track down the killer?” Elizabeth suggested abruptly, setting down the book she’d been attempting to read to look directly at John. He’d been staring blankly at the pill bottle he’d acquired from the hospital pharmacy for the past twenty minutes while they waited for their dinner to finish baking. So far, the drug was making him feel a bit sluggish and there was a slight ringing in his ears, but he didn’t have a headache, so that was something. Maybe.

“I’m not sure it works like that,” he said, slowly.

“Constable Perry came into the shop to see me today,” she continued, clearly working this thought out as she spoke. “I told him you’d been with me on all the nights he asked about and hadn’t been acting suspiciously. He’s lucky Dad was there, otherwise I’d have been tempted to give him a real piece of my mind. You helped deliver his son last year, for God’s sake, where would Samantha or little Andrew be today if it hadn’t been for you?” Elizabeth evidently realised she was drifting off-topic then because she paused and collected herself. 

“But then, after he left, I had a look at the calendar. There’s a pattern; we just couldn’t see it before because it took so long to find Mr. Crossly. The killer is following a pattern. Every three days, someone new dies.”

John did the maths. “That means the next death will be tomorrow night.”

“Exactly. Which makes it the perfect opportunity for us to try to find them.”

“Surely the Mounties are aware of this and will be out looking as well. We’ve no proof that my headaches are actually connected with the deaths. What makes you think we stand any better chance of finding the killer than they do?” He rubbed at his temple.

“I don’t know,” she said, frustration rising in her voice. “I just can’t stand the thought of sitting at home while another person dies when there might have been something I could have done to prevent it.” On the last word, her voice cracked. Sudden tears welled in her eyes.

“Oh Beth,” he rose and pulled her into his arms. She clutched at his braces and sobbed noisily into his shirt.

—

_“Hold still, you’re making it worse!” he hissed at his patient and took hold of the man’s hands to press them against his bleeding thigh while he worked to get his armour off. The young Time Lord’s eyes were wide with panic and he was breathing erratically. He kept trying to look over his shoulder to spot the incoming Dalek battalion through the smoke._

_“They’re coming, they’re coming,” he kept saying, voice high and thready. “We’re going to die.”_

_The Doctor finally managed to unclip the damaged breastplate and shoved it aside. Clumsily retrieving his sonic with fingers slippery with blood, he cut the soldier’s uniform apart to reveal the wound. It was an ugly laceration, deep and ragged. The armour had deflected the worst of the shrapnel away from his vital organs, but if the Doctor couldn’t get it sealed up quickly, there was a good chance he’d bleed out. Laser sutures were cruder than a dermal regenerator would’ve been, but they were all he had in his kit at the moment, so they'd have to do._

_“This is going to hurt," he warned him. "I'll need to you hold perfectly still. And whatever you do, don’t scream. Understood?” He grabbed the restless Gallifreyan by the chin and turned his head to look him directly in the eyes as he spoke. The younger man nodded fearfully._

_He pressed an anaesthetic hypospray into the man’s hip, but in this state, his body would metabolise the drug within a minute or two._

_“What’s your name?” he asked to distract the soldier while he worked. The sutures weren’t really the painful part. The Doctor first had to remove the larger pieces of metal and then quickly probe the open wound with his fingers to check for leftover shards._

_“Coraxistratos,” the man mumbled through gritted teeth and whimpered._

_“Arcalian, right?" he guessed, judging by the small insignia patch on the man's shoulder. "Tell me about yourself. What did you do before the war?" The soldier moaned and didn't reply. "Steady on, Corax, I’m almost finished here.” He pinched the last bit of flesh together carefully and reached for his suture gun. When he was done, his patient was grey and shaking badly._

_“Stay with me,” he said, slapping the man’s clammy cheek lightly. “I’m going to get you back to my ship, but you’re going to have to walk a bit.”_

_“They’ll see us!”_

_“That is a distinct possibility. But if we stay here, they’ll definitely find us. Brave heart.” He rose to a crouch, swung the man’s right arm over his shoulder, and pulled them both upright with a grunt. Moving as swiftly as they could over the rocky terrain, they hobbled away from the front. The sound of mortar shells coming ever closer hounded their steps._

_They made it to within sight of the Doctor’s battered red police box when their luck ran out._

_“EX-TER-MINATE!” a harsh metallic voice screamed and the ground just ahead of them exploded in a shower of dirt._

_The Doctor stumbled and dropped his charge. Unable to support his own weight, Corax fell to his hands and knees. Before either of them had a chance to react, a second blast narrowly missed the Doctor and struck the kneeling Time Lord instead. The injured soldier collapsed and lay motionless on the ground._

_“Corax!” The Doctor shouted, reaching for his arm to pull him up. The Time Lord didn’t respond._

_“EX-TER-MINATE!” Another bolt of blue energy sizzled past the Doctor’s head._

_Scrambling to regain his footing, the Doctor scooped up Corax’s weapon and fired back at the Dalek. His shots scorched the exterior of the Dalek’s casing, but the creature kept advancing on him, firing indiscriminately. Changing tactics, he aimed instead at a nearby bit of rubble, causing it to fall into the Dalek's path, temporarily blocking it, and ran for the TARDIS._

_As he ran, time seemed to slow, stretching and warping around him. He saw the shell before it landed, could even read the Gallifreyan script engraved on its side, but was powerless to save himself. The force from the blast hit him like a locomotive and then everything went black._

John jolted awake to find himself alone in bed. A dozen horrible scenarios ran through his panicked mind in the few seconds before the sound of the cabin door closing in the other room provided the perfectly innocuous explanation for where Elizabeth had gone. He heard water running briefly in the kitchen and a minute later her footsteps led back to the bedroom. 

She jumped a little in surprise when she walked in and saw he was sitting up. “Oh goodness, John, you startled me.” 

“Sorry, I didn't intend to. I woke up and was worried when you weren’t here,” he admitted sheepishly. He felt a little silly for immediately leaping to the worst case scenarios now that he'd had a chance to shake off the dream.

“Everything’s fine, just went to the privy. You can go back to sleep.” She shed her dressing gown and climbed back under the warm blankets. Her reassuring kiss tasted of peppermint and anchored him in the present. John leaned in to deepen the kiss, but she pulled back, biting her lip. 

“Not tonight,” she said softly. “Stomach’s a little touchy right now; I don’t think that casserole agreed with me.”

John immediately shifted from slightly amorous spouse to concerned doctor. “I have some antacids in my bag if you need something. I can go fetch them for you,” he offered, moving to get up.

Elizabeth laughed at his earnestness. “I’ll be fine dear. Not everything is a medical emergency. I’ve chewed a peppermint. Let’s just get some rest.” She tossed a pillow at him.

—

Dawn on Wednesday morning saw the first shift of miners take up their posts on the picket line. A wall of bodies three hundred men deep crowded the access road to the mine, holding signs and chanting.

Along Main Street in downtown Yellow Fork, several private businesses posted signs in support of the strike. Frasier’s Books was among them.

Graham Crossly’s successor, Charles Parrish, gave an interview with the local newspaper, which turned into an editorial on the mysterious deaths and demanded answers from the company and Mounted Police alike. Copies of that week’s edition were printed early.

For those townsfolk who’d spotted the three day cycle of deaths, the day was a tense affair of waiting and worrying.

—

“You’re not going out there alone.” Elizabeth stood in the doorway wearing her warmest coat and sturdiest boots. A compact camera hung from a leather strap around her neck. “This was my idea.”

“Yes, I am. If there is a killer roaming the streets tonight, I don’t want you anywhere near them. I want you safe,” John argued.

“What if I want _you_ safe?” she countered, crossing her arms.

“I’m taking precautions,” he said, indicating the old Winchester rifle he’d slung over his shoulder. The gun was normally stored inside a trunk at their cabin, kept near the door in case of wandering bears or moose. It hadn’t been fired in ages, so he’d checked it over thoroughly and cleaned it before loading the chamber. Despite his personal distaste for firearms, a gun was something of a necessity in rural life and, given the extreme situation they found themselves in, he was glad to have one available to him now.

“How are you planning to defend yourself with that if you’re having another attack?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him. 

He scowled. “That’s what the new medication is for.”

“Except that if it works - which we don’t even know that it will yet - you can’t take it beforehand and still use your headaches to track the killer.”

She wasn’t wrong. He’d realised that problem as soon as he’d decided to attempt this ridiculous scheme. “I know. I’ll have to take it as soon as I’ve got a solid fix on the killer’s location and wait for it to take effect.”

“Which leaves ample time for you to be completely vulnerable if the killer sees you. Don’t be stupid, John. You can’t do this on your own. How are you going to drive if you’re busy playing detector? Last time you had one of these migraines while driving you crashed our car,” she exclaimed. “Besides,” she added, “what are you going to say if you run across the police tonight? You need me, I’m your alibi.”

“Yes, yes all right, fine,” he conceded. “You can drive. But if things get dangerous, I want you to stay in the car. We’re only trying to find this person, not confront them ourselves unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”

Elizabeth nodded, satisfied.

Hours later, they sat idling at a deserted intersection at the southern edge of town. John had a map of Yellow Fork spread out on his lap and was marking off their route with a pencil. They’d moved methodically through the quiet streets, searching for the slightest hint of trouble. Now it was getting late and the night had unexpectedly become bitterly cold, very quickly. The tiny heater in the passenger cabin was barely keeping up. 

“We’ve been through each quadrant three times now. Either our killer’s decided to change his pattern, or we’ve missed him,” he said with a sigh. “It was a clever thought, but the most recent deaths have all been far off the beaten path and we can’t be everywhere at once.”

Elizabeth exhaled sharply, blowing a stray curl away from her face. “You think we should give up then?”

He recognised that tone. Ernie’s death still weighed on them both; she didn’t want to quit for his sake. “One more loop. Then we call it a night,” he offered.

She nodded and put the car in gear.

They were halfway home when it happened. Slight pressure behind his right temple surged briefly to pain and faded again.

“Stop, stop, go back,” John said, rapping on the dash urgently with the palm of his hand.

“Where?” she put the Ford in reverse.

“There, there.” He pointed down a side street they’d just passed and grit his teeth as the pain got stronger.

Elizabeth turned down the street and drove slowly, following his directions until he doubled over, clutching at his head in agony. She made a hasty turn to get them further away and stopped the car. 

“Take your pill, John,” she urged, pushing the medicine bottle into his shaking hands.

He didn’t need to be told twice; he fumbled with the cap and shook a capsule out into his palm without looking. He swallowed it quickly and sat taking slow, even breaths until he felt safe opening his eyes. 

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Near the Ajax. I think the worst of it was back behind us.” She pointed.

“Okay.” John reached for the rifle. “Stay here. I’m going to go have a look.”

“Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe I should go. You don’t look well.” She held his forearm nervously.

“I’ll survive. Stay here,” he repeated. “Lock the car doors.”

“Don’t get too close,” she hissed. “And take the camera with you.” She shoved the Brownie at him. 

He took the camera, looped the carry strap over his head, and opened the car door. The cold air on his face was like a slap to his senses. Distantly, he could hear something that sounded suspiciously like a strangled shout. He took off running toward the sound.

As he approached the source of the disturbance, both the pain in his head and the sounds of fighting increased. Breathing hard, he rounded a corner to turn down an unpaved alley. Ahead of him, silhouetted in the dimly lit passage he could just make out the forms of two men struggling. One of the men appeared to have the other by the throat. 

“You there!” he shouted, forgetting that the plan was for him to avoid notice. 

Both men looked up and he realised that the one being choked was a policeman. Flashes of the red of his uniform were just visible under his dark overcoat as he struggled. 

“Let him go!” John edged closer, the pressure in his head growing ever more excruciating.

The other man didn’t listen and turned back to his task, pulling the constable closer to himself.

“Let him go or I’ll shoot!” he warned, but the threat was an empty one. His vision was swimming with pain and he could barely feel his fingers, let alone pull a trigger. And with the two men grappling like they were, he likely wouldn’t have gotten a clean shot anyway. He stumbled to his knees.

Through a haze of agony, he thought he saw the attacking man force the Mountie’s face level with his own and press his open mouth against the policeman’s. Then the pain overwhelmed him, and John blacked out.

—

_... "Koschei, no. You can't do this!”_

_Pain, a thousand times worse than any regeneration. He was slipping away. Losing himself._

_"Au revoir, Doctor."_

—

“John! Oh God, please wake up.”

John came to with his head cradled in Elizabeth’s lap. She was bent over him, face streaked with frosty tear tracks, breath cloudy in the freezing night air.

“Beth,” he croaked hoarsely.

“Oh thank goodness!” She kissed him in relief.

“What are you doing out here? Told you to stay in the car,” he said, fighting to regain control of his limbs and sit up.

“I heard you shouting, and then when I saw Constable Fontaine come running out of the alley, I was terrified you’d been hurt,” she said.

“You saw the constable leave?” He pushed himself up, alarmed.

She nodded. “I shouted for him to stop, but I don’t think he heard me.”

John looked around them. Just a few metres to his left lay the crumpled form of the other man he'd seen involved in the fight. "Is he...?" he asked.

Elizabeth shook her head. "I don't know. I was too worried about you," she admitted.

He crawled over to check the other man. "He's dead." Of course he was. The abused nerves in John's head throbbed in protest as he climbed to his feet.

"Did you see what happened?"

"There were two men fighting, this chap and the Mountie. I interrupted them. He was winning, or at least I thought so until I passed out," John answered her, trying to puzzle out what exactly had transpired in the interim. "It looked like he was trying to kill Fontaine.”

"Looks like the constable got the best of him in the end."

"Evidently," he muttered vaguely. There was much more to it than that, but he couldn’t quite figure out what was bothering him. 

Excited voices near the entrance to the alley caught their attention. John and Elizabeth exchanged fearful glances.

"Over this way," a man shouted.

"This looks bad." John realised; he handed the gun to Elizabeth. “Follow my lead,” he murmured under his breath. He held up his hands and walked toward the voices. “Down here!” he called, waving. He was almost immediately blinded by a pair of torches shined directly at his face.

“There he is!” a second male voice said. “That’s our man.”

His stomach sank. “Hold on, chaps, before you get the wrong idea…” he started to say, using his hand to shade his eyes, but was interrupted by someone grabbing his arm roughly.

“And what idea would that be, Dr. Foreman? That you’ve been lying to us? You’ll hang for this, doctor,” the man holding him hissed in his ear. 

As the bright spots in his vision cleared, John realised it was Constable Perry. His companion was Constable Fontaine, who was currently crouched next to the dead man, checking for a pulse. Elizabeth stood to the side, eyes wide and face white in the reflected torchlight; she’d obviously hidden the rifle somewhere, because her clenched hands were empty.

“I haven’t… I was trying to _help_ ,” he protested.

“He’s dead. Just like the others,” Fontaine said, rising from his crouch.

“Of course he’s dead,” John said, confused. “You killed him.”

Fontaine looked at him, meeting his eyes directly, and lied. “You’re going to have to do better than that when we bring you before the magistrate. I watched you kill this man, barely escaped with my own life, and now you’re claiming I did it? Tom Kelly was a friend of mine, damn you.”

“What?!” Both John and Elizabeth asked the question at the same time.

“Dr. John Foreman, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Thomas Kelly,” Perry said, wrenching his arm behind his back and reaching for the handcuffs on his belt.

“That’s not what happened at all,” John insisted, looking to Elizabeth for corroboration. 

“You can’t arrest John, he didn’t kill that man!” She stepped forward, ready to argue more, but was stopped by Fontaine. 

“Stay where you are Mrs. Foreman, or I’ll have to arrest you too,” Perry warned her. “Frankly, I’m not entirely convinced I shouldn’t anyway.”

Elizabeth froze, rage colouring her cheeks. She caught John’s gaze, silently mouthed the word ‘run’, and swooned theatrically, falling against Constable Fontaine. The move wasn’t terribly convincing, but it did succeed in distracting the policemen for a second, which was all he needed to break free of Perry’s grip. He threw his shoulder into the centre of the constable’s chest, knocking the man off-balance and fled into the night.


	9. Courage

  
_"Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway."_  


As soon as he cleared the alley and was out of his pursuers’ line of sight, John changed direction, cutting around the first building he passed to get out of the street, hurrying down a different alleyway, and ducking behind a parked car.

Panting for air, he assessed his situation. He knew roughly where he was now, but he didn’t know where he was going. He couldn’t head back to the bookshop, it would be the first place they’d think to check. Home was too far to go in the dark and on foot; they’d either catch him along the road or he’d get lost in the forest and freeze before he got there. It was probably close to twenty below now and the wind was starting to pick up. He needed to find somewhere warm to hide; the longer he stayed out in the cold, the greater his risk of hypothermia.

If he could make it to the hospital, he could spend the night there, he realised. It was less than two kilometres away and there wouldn’t be anyone else there this late. In the very least it might buy him enough time to come up with a better plan.

After pulling his scarf up over his nose and mouth and tugging his wool cap down as far as it would go over his ears to ward off frostbite, John crept out of the alleyway and began his careful, tense journey through Yellow Fork. He stuck to the shadows as much as possible, pausing to watch and listen for the police frequently. Twice the sound of a motor approaching gave him just enough time to drop out of sight. Slowly, he made his way northwest towards his target and within the hour had the hospital in view.

The direct approach to the building through the car park and up across the lawn offered little in the way of cover, so he circled around back using the dense trees along the perimeter of the property to disguise his movements. Wary of discovery, he waited there for several minutes, watching to be sure that the building was empty before darting out of hiding again.

His key let him in through the rear entrance of the hospital. He was shaking badly as he closed and locked the door behind him; the adrenaline that had kept him alert and moving forward was wearing off, leaving him feeling drained and unsteady. Too afraid of being seen to switch on a light, he picked his way through the dark rooms by feel, eventually locating the closet where they kept spare bedding and an emergency torch he could use. He stumbled wearily with his bundle down the stairs to the basement. He’d bed down in the small room that held the furnace and was used primarily as a storage space for broken or unused furniture. With the gas thermostat turned down low overnight, that would be the warmest place for him to stay and had the added advantage of being out of the way, should he accidentally oversleep.

As he assembled his makeshift bed, John’s anxious thoughts turned to concern for Elizabeth. He didn't know what had happened to her after he’d fled. Surely she'd be arrested for helping him escape. Worse, he’d probably just left her alone with a murderer. This was precisely the nightmare scenario he’d been trying so desperately to avoid. He hoped Constable Perry’s presence would be enough to ensure her safety.

The memory of the two men struggling in the alley returned to his mind. He couldn't shake the notion that he'd witnessed something important there, something that explained everything, if only he could work out what it was. The whole situation was maddening; nothing about this made any kind of sense. How could Hugh Fontaine be the killer? He didn’t know the lad especially well, but the constable had always seemed friendly enough. Even if he was harbouring a hidden dark side, John couldn't imagine how the young man had managed to kill six people before someone caught him in the act. But then if he wasn't the killer, why lie about what happened?

—

“Mrs. Foreman, I understand your reluctance to help us, but your husband is obviously a very sick man. He's been hurting people, and that's got to stop now.” Sergeant Brannock held out his hands beseechingly across the interview table.

“You’re wrong.” Elizabeth shook her head, her brown curls escaping their pins to flop over her eyes. She didn't bother trying to tuck them back into place. “You’ve got it all wrong. John would never hurt a soul. He was only in that alley tonight because we heard the fight and thought someone was in trouble. He only wanted to help.”

“Constable Fontaine says he saw him kill Tom Kelly.”

“Well, Constable Fontaine is lying,” she snapped, green eyes flashing dangerously. “I don’t know why, but he is. John said it looked like Mr. Kelly was trying to kill the constable, but since Kelly’s the one who’s dead, it could easily have been the other way ‘round. If I were you, I’d be asking where _he’s_ been the past couple weeks, not my husband.”

“And what, exactly, were you and Dr. Foreman doing out there tonight?”

“I’ve already told you. We were driving home.” Her hands were clenched into tight fists in her lap.

“From where?”

“South of town.”

“I see.” He struck a match and lit a cigarette lazily. “And what were you doing there so late?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” He raised his eyebrows.

“We were just driving,” she said, defensively.

“In the middle of the night?”

“Yes, in the middle of the night. That isn’t illegal.”

“It isn’t. But I think you can understand why I might find your story just a tad suspect,” he said, gesturing with his glowing cigarette. “We’ve a murderer on the loose and you choose to go driving around while everyone else is at home, staying in their beds and out of trouble.”

“Well that’s just it, isn’t it,” she said, looking up to meet his eyes. “Everyone’s been hiding, like that's going to make a difference, like that’s going to keep them safe, and it hasn’t solved anything yet. People are still dying. Every three nights, people are dying.”

Brannock rubbed his chin with his thumb. “And you and your husband decided to do something different?”

“I thought if we went out tonight, that maybe we’d see something, that we could stop this from happening to someone else.” She wiped away an unwanted tear with the back of her hand. “Obviously that’s not how things worked out.”

—

The sound of a door slamming and nearby voices startled John out of the exposure-induced trance he’d slipped into. He sat huddled as close as he could get to the furnace grate without being immediately visible if someone happened to open the door, still fully dressed to retain more heat under three layers of blankets. His heart hammered wildly in his chest.

The voices grew closer and John clutched the heavy torch in his lap like a baton, as if it could actually protect him. He held his breath and strained his ears to listen. Had someone seen him enter the building after all?

Thankfully, the voices seemed to stop short of the room he was in and went into another. He heard grunting and a telling thump, as if something quite heavy had just been set down in the room next to his own.

Belatedly, he realised what must be going on. They weren't here looking for him; they were merely delivering Kelly's body to the morgue. Relief poured into his veins as he stood and pressed his ear against the wall to better hear their conversation.

“…I can’t tell you more until I’ve done the full examination,” Dr. Marshall’s low voice rumbled through the plaster, “but yes, it looks to be the same cause of death as the others.”

Another voice - Constable Perry, John thought - replied with a question but he couldn’t make out the words clearly.

“It’ll keep until morning, Albert; it isn’t as though he’s got anywhere else to be. The body’s not even cold yet and I’ve not had any sleep tonight.” Rupert sounded irritated.

“…no … be difficult… just because Dr. Foreman is your friend…” Anger made Perry’s voice barely audible.

A metal drawer closed abruptly, shaking the wall.

“If he has done what you say, I’ll not stand in your way, I’ll even give evidence against him when the time comes, but you don’t know John Foreman like I do.”

A muttered response. The sound of a door opening.

“You’ll get your report tomorrow evening, constable.”

Heavy footsteps out in the hall. John heard the door close with a click and then the sharper notes of riding boots on linoleum as the Mountie followed the old surgeon out of the building.

Mentally, John counted to one hundred after hearing the door upstairs shut before allowing himself to breathe normally again. Then he checked his watch. 2:42 am. That meant he had about four hours to rest and somehow come up with a plan to stop these killings and clear his own name.

If such a thing were even possible.

—

“I don’t care what you say she’s done; she isn’t a danger to anyone in this town. Anything you have to say to her can be better said during civilised hours and in the presence of a solicitor if necessary. If my daughter isn’t out here in five minutes, I’ll have the whole of the Mounted Police command structure down on your head by day’s end, so help me.”

There were few men alive who’d seen Harold Frasier truly angry and Corporal Briggs had just achieved the dubious distinction of joining that select group. It was a sight worthy of the description ‘awe-inspiring’. The reedy policeman swallowed with some difficulty and pushed his round spectacles up his nose nervously; he had little doubt that the old bookseller could make good on his threat.

"I’ll speak with the sergeant, sir,” he said, and practically ran from the desk to find his superior officer.

Mr. Frasier watched him leave with cold iron in his gaze. He stood with his back held straight in the centre of the police station lobby, hands folded neatly over the head of his cane, and waited.

—

Despite being exhausted nearly to the point of delirium, John had too much on his mind to fall asleep. Instead, he paced his self-imposed basement cell and tried to work out what it was that he was missing from this picture. About half an hour into his frustrated ruminations, it occurred to him mid-stride that he had more than his own faulty memory to work with.

He had the body.

Feeling slightly superstitious as he did so, John opened the door to the morgue and peered inside with his torch. The same impersonal, white-tiled room greeted him that he'd seen when he was last in here more than a week previously. He wrinkled his nose. It stank of bleach and hints of other, far less pleasant aromas. Set into the far wall was a wide metal cabinet with four separate drawers. He tried each in turn until he located the one with the covered figure inside.

Pulling out the drawer, John flicked back the sheet to reveal the man's face and shoulders. It was the man from earlier, all right, Thomas Kelly, they’d said his name was. Laid out like this, he already looked much less alive than he had in the alley, skin pallid and waxy. John suppressed a shudder and set about looking for anything unusual about the body.

Faint marks on Kelly's neck reminded him of those he'd seen on Hodges' body. But he'd had Fontaine by the throat when John interrupted their fight. He checked the man's wrists. Sure enough, there were fresh bruises there from when the constable had tried to pry him off, proof that John hadn’t just imagined that happening. But if Kelly had been the aggressor, why then had Fontaine felt the need to lie about it? He could’ve rightly said he’d been defending himself.

Unless…

Shining his light into the man’s mouth revealed swollen and inflamed tissue at the back of his throat, just like the other victims. He checked over the rest of the body quickly to be certain. Aside from a few scrapes and small bruises on his arms, there were no other signs of trauma. Nothing that you would expect to see if Fontaine had overpowered his attacker in the end. John stepped back and stared down at the body in the drawer, thoughts racing.

Kelly had pulled Fontaine towards him. Put his mouth over the other man’s. John blacked out. Then Kelly was dead. A new death every three nights. No obvious connection between all seven victims, save their identical internal injuries and John’s migraines. _Blank faces and empty eyes watching his every move while their friends and families lay lifeless at their feet. Incredible pain in his head. "Not as easy as it was with the others, is it?" he shouted defiantly into the darkness._

His dreams had been trying to warn him. He’d seen this before.

—

“Let him take her home then,” Brannock said. “She’s not much use to us here anyway. It’s her husband we want. Watch her. If she goes anywhere I want to know,” he instructed Perry, who’d just returned from the hospital. “Fontaine, I want you to get on to the magistrate. I need a warrant for those phone lines, so we’ll know if he tries to contact her.”

“Sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

—

Torch tucked up under his armpit to free his hands, John riffled through the drug supplies in the small hospital pharmacy.

Now that he had an idea of what it was he was facing, he knew that it was up to him alone to confront it before it could kill again. No one else was likely to believe that an entity from another world had taken over Constable Fontaine’s body. It sounded insane even to John, and it was his theory. There was also still a chance he was wrong, which is why he’d have to plan his approach very carefully.

On his own, John faced several difficulties. The first was that he needed to be able to remain alert and fully functional throughout the entire encounter with this entity. Dosing himself with the Diamox had helped, he suspected, because he’d remained conscious long enough to see most of what happened, but ultimately it hadn’t been enough. This time he’d need to take it well in advance, and with something else to counter the drowsiness it caused.

He eyed the stimulants they had in stock. There weren’t a lot of options available to him, and none of them very safe in combination with his medication. He grit his teeth and selected the amphetamine tablets, setting the bottle to the side next to the migraine medication while he returned the other candidates to their bins. He added a tin of Rolaids to the pile as an afterthought and prayed he hadn’t just devised a drug cocktail that would stop his heart instead of save him.

Next, he needed a way to subdue Fontaine quickly, if the entity using his body refused to cooperate. He’d left the rifle with Elizabeth, but the threat of a firearm hadn’t exactly done him much good a few hours ago anyway. He didn’t like his chances of escaping a hanging if he shot a Mountie either, no matter what excuse he gave. Drugging the policeman carried a similar risk, but at least it was a quieter method than a gun and he’d have the option of using a less than fatal dose.

Fast acting and easy to administer meant he was looking for one thing - barbiturates. He found the vial he needed and prepared two syringes with a sizeable dose of sodium thiopental. Half of one would drop a man of Fontaine’s size in about thirty seconds, all he needed to do was get it into a vein.

If it came down to it, he was prepared to kill Fontaine and face the consequences if it meant that Elizabeth and the rest of Yellow Fork’s residents would be safe. The constable had already lost his life to this thing, John reminded himself, it was only a matter of when his body caught up to this fact.

Now armed for battle, John tidied the pharmacy and retreated to his basement sanctuary to think. All that remained was to figure out how to get Fontaine alone some place secluded.

—

“It’s starting to snow,” Elizabeth said, looking down at the street from her father’s flat. Thick white flakes drifted past the window. “Do you think he’s all right out there?”

Harold Frasier sat by the fire in his favourite chair and nodded. “John’s no fool, Elizabeth. He’ll have found somewhere safe to spend the night.”

“I know. I just can’t help but worry about him, Dad.” She sniffled and came away from the window to perch nervously on the sofa. Chesterton padded over to her and put his chin on her lap, leaning his full weight against her legs. She scratched his ears gratefully.

Her father raised his mug with trembling hands and sipped at his tea before speaking again. “Worry never did anybody much good,” he said kindly. “Don’t you think it’s about time you told your old man what you two have gotten yourselves mixed up in, though?”

Elizabeth bit her lip.

—

All through the rest of the night it snowed. Sunrise brightened overcast skies to an ominous grey and the snow continued to slowly pile up.

—

Though there hadn't been any sign of the other staff yet, John took care to move as silently as possible through the building. He needed the telephone if this plan of his was going to work.

Elizabeth answered on the first ring. She must have been waiting up to hear from him. "Hello?"

"Beth."

"John! Oh, thank goodness! Are you all right? Where are you? The police are still looking for you." Her voice was frantic.

"I'm safe. I'm sorry. I can't explain right now, but I think I've figured out what's been killing all of these people. If I'm right, I think I can stop it."

"What's going on?"

"Just promise me you'll stay where you are. Close the shop today. Don't leave the flat."

"Why?"

"If I don't come back tonight, or if I do and I’m not the same somehow, I want you to take Ches and your father and get as far away from Yellow Fork as possible and never look back." His voice was low, urgent.

"What do you mean 'if you do’? I'm not going to just leave without you," she hissed into the receiver.

"If it comes to it, yes, you are. Because I'll already be dead." He was very matter of fact about it.

"John, you're scaring me."

"Constable Fontaine has been compromised; the police can't be trusted now. Listen carefully, you have to remember this - _it can become anyone_. If I come home and I can’t answer immediately any question about our life together or I just don’t seem like myself when you see me again, then that means I've lost and it has me too. In that case, don't hesitate, just save yourself."

"Compromised? What do you mean ‘it can become anyone’? You don’t sound like yourself right now! You're talking nonsense, John. What are you going to do?"

"I told you. I'm going to stop the killings. I can't tell you the details." He glanced at the clock on the wall; he needed to wrap this up. "I love you, Beth. Whatever happens today, I love you and I'm sorry." He rang off before she could say anything else.

His next call was to the police station.

"Hello, I'd like to speak with Constable Fontaine, please. Is he available? I’m afraid it’s urgent." John did his best to affect a Canadian accent to disguise his voice.

“Just a moment.” There was a long pause as the policeman who’d answered handed off the phone. John breathed a sigh of relief; he wasn't sure what he would've done if his quarry hadn't been there.

Fontaine's voice came on the line. "Yes, this is Fontaine. To whom am I speaking?" He sounded odd to John until he realised that his voice was missing the vaguely Québécois accent it normally had. It’d been gone last night as well, he realised.

"This is Dr. Foreman," he said, dropping his vocal subterfuge. "Before you say anything else, I know your secret. I know what you really are. We need to speak in person; I may be able to help you."

—

"Dad, I'm going to go look in on the cabin before the weather gets worse," Elizabeth called downstairs, already lacing up her boots.

"He's asked you to meet him somewhere, hasn't he?" her father replied.

"As it happens, no, he hasn't. He actually asked me to stay here and batten down the hatches." She appeared in the doorway, buttoning her coat.

Mr. Frasier grunted with approval for his son-in-law's suggestion. "And you're going to ignore that perfectly sensible advice."

"I'd hardly regard anything he just said to me as sensible. I think he's about to do something incredibly stupid." She wrapped a bright wool scarf over her hair and around her throat. "And I intend to stop him before he gets himself killed."

"Elizabeth," he rumbled, warningly.

"I'll be careful, I promise. I'm not going to take any unnecessary risks." She leaned forward to kiss her father on the cheek. "I'll call to let you know when I've made it to the cabin."

—

After completing his two telephone calls, John slipped out the back of the building and waited in the trees for his co-workers to arrive. The overnight snowfall meant that they were running later than usual. He watched as the town's only snowplough trundled dutifully down the street.

The delay provided additional time for him to second guess his plan and for his bladder to remind him yet again why mixing diuretics with stimulants was a bad idea. He moved further into the trees to find a convenient bush. At least with all the snow it had warmed up slightly.

While he relieved himself, the small car park gained two new vehicles. Dr. Eugene and Nurse Oberle had finally reported in to work. John didn't expect Dr. Marshall to arrive until much later in the morning based on his irritable mood late last night. He gave it five more minutes, then darted out from his hiding place to slip inside Dr. Eugene's car.

Luck was with him; Alan had left the keys in the glove compartment, like he always did. Feeling slightly guilty, John started the car and drove off before anyone who might've seen him could protest. If he survived this, he could apologise to Alan for borrowing his car later.

He drove cautiously, not wanting to have another wreck before he could make it to his destination. He'd selected a location that he knew well and wouldn't require that he drive through anywhere he might easily be spotted and recognised. It was a picnic area on the eastern shores of Redfern Lake. In the summer, it was a lovely place to visit; covered in fresh snow, it was breathtaking, if a bit on the chilly side. He'd been there with Elizabeth and Ches many times.

The lake was dull and grey like the sky when he arrived. He shut off the engine and listened to the metal tick as it cooled, the only sound louder than his own thundering heartbeat in his ears at the moment. When he could draw a breath without his hands trembling, he got out to walk around.

He’d told Fontaine to meet him at nine o'clock, so he still had some time to refamiliarise himself with the lay of the land. There wasn't much to memorize. A wooden picnic table sat beneath a handful of stately pines overlooking a gently sloping beach. From his vantage point on the beach, he would be able to see any cars approaching, but thick tree cover on three sides meant that the clearing wasn’t readily visible from the main road. There was a back way out of the small parking area used primarily by the forestry service that he knew about and had positioned his car to be ready for a hasty exit. 

Constable Fontaine arrived more or less on-time, in a brown sedan with the Mounted Police logo painted on the door. He sat in his car for a moment, eyeing John warily as the other man stood waiting for him in the open. Finally, he got out and approached him slowly, stopping a few metres away.

"What do you want?" the constable asked.

"To help, if I can," John answered truthfully. "You don't come from this world, am I right?"

The Mountie tilted his head to the side but didn't reply. Some snow fell off the wide brim of his hat.

"You can't keep this up, you know. Eventually someone will be able to stop you, or you'll run out of bodies to jump to."

"What do you know of such things?" the entity asked, expression more curious than anything else.

"I know I've encountered your people before, on another world, in another lifetime," he said. "I can help you get back to that world, provided you agree to leave immediately and never return."

"How? I have seen your technology in the minds of those I have taken. This world has only recently discovered how to split the atom. You are just an ordinary man."

"Am I?" John meant to give the other man pause, convince the entity to trust him, but realised he was asking himself that question too.

The entity frowned. It seemed to be considering his offer more seriously. “If you know so much, why would you help me? Why not just kill me?”

“Because I’ve already seen enough bloodshed in my life. I’d rather not be responsible for more, if I can help it. But this is my home, I’ll protect it if I must. You can't stay on this world. Not if it means more lives are lost.” The muscles in his right hand spasmed slightly, but he resisted the instinct to shove his hands into his pockets. He’d put one of the syringes up his sleeve and it pressed uncomfortably against his wrist.

Before either of them could speak again they were interrupted by the sound of a car engine. John looked up to see a familiar yellow Ford pulling into the parking area. His heart sank. Not now! Damn it all, he’d told her to stay in town for a reason.

The entity’s reaction was rather as poor as John had feared, it bared its teeth and spun around to face the approaching threat, reaching for the constable’s side arm as he did so.

“He’s armed!” John shouted to his wife.

She stepped out of the car holding a rifle which she levelled at the Mountie. “I wouldn’t,” she warned, and walked towards them slowly. 

"Beth, stay back. He's dangerous.”

"What’s going on here, John? I've known Hugh Fontaine for years; he can't have killed all those people. Are you sure you haven't made a mistake?" she asked, tension in her voice. She didn’t come any closer though. 

"That isn't Constable Fontaine. Hugh Fontaine didn't kill anyone. It was the creature that's now wearing his body," he replied.

She shook her head. "What does that even mean? What you’re saying isn’t _possible_." 

"Mrs. Foreman, I need your help," the entity spoke, sensing an opportunity in their conversation. "Please put the rifle down. I only want your husband to come back with me to town. Enough people have been hurt already.”

“Don't listen to him. You know I haven’t hurt anyone.”

Elizabeth looked from him to Constable Fontaine and wavered. She hadn’t really planned this rescue, and now she stood paralysed with indecision.

“Please, Elizabeth, I need you to trust me. I'll explain everything later. You just need to get out of here," he pleaded. 

She didn't move. “Why did you say John killed that man in the alley?” she asked instead, keeping the barrel of the rifle pointed at the constable.

The entity glanced over at John. “Tell your wife to put down the gun, and we can all discuss this back at the station, where it's warm."

“I think you should answer her question first,” he replied, a small measure of satisfaction creeping into his voice. He was winning.

The entity looked from John to Elizabeth, calculating. He could see in its eyes the instant it made the decision. “Because I thought it was expedient to do so,” it answered flatly.

Elizabeth blinked. She hadn’t been expecting that reply. It made her let her guard down for just a second. 

That was all it took.

Before either of them could react, the entity closed the distance between itself and Elizabeth and knocked the gun out of her hands, sending it flying into the snow behind her. It went off with a flat ‘crack!’ that echoed off the overlooking mountain ridges.

It felt like time had slowed down as he watched the entity grab her wrist and pull her down. “Don't let him touch you!” he screamed, running forward to help her. 

She kicked out, catching the constable on the jaw with her boot, and scrambled away.

John threw himself at the Mountie, tackling him to the ground. The entity thrashed and rolled, fighting to force him over onto his back. He could already feel the pressure building in his head as they grappled. 

“Get back!” he shouted to warn Elizabeth while he struggled to free the syringe in his sleeve. His opponent quickly figured out that he had a weapon and got a blow in on John’s sternum, knocking the wind out of him, and wrenched his arm in the wrong direction. The syringe slipped out of his grasp and dropped uselessly into the snow.

Pressing his advantage, the policeman got his hands on John’s throat and used his full weight to give him the leverage he needed to land on top of the doctor. The fire in John’s skull focused his vision down to a very narrow field. All he could see was Fontaine’s face getting closer and closer to his own. He felt like he was drowning. The darkness was closing in.

Then suddenly the hands choking the life out of him went slack and he could breathe again. The oppressive weight on his chest disappeared. John rolled over onto his side to cough until he tasted blood. When his vision returned, he saw what had been responsible for his salvation.

Fontaine’s body lay limp in the snow. Elizabeth stood over him with a syringe still in her shaking hand. She’d depressed the plunger all the way. 

“Are you all right?” she asked once he’d stopped coughing.

“I’m okay,” he wheezed and climbed to his feet. He gently took the syringe from her and let it fall next to the constable’s body, stepping closer to pull her in against his chest, reassuring himself with his hands that she was whole and safe. Then he kissed her with everything he had left in him. When they finally pulled apart to gasp for air, there were tears of relief wetting both their cheeks. They broke into nervous laughter, hiccoughing and clinging to one another. 

“I thought he was going to kill you,” she said, stroking his face and gripping the lapel of his coat tightly with her other hand. A sudden terrifying thought stilled her hand. “You are still yourself, right?”

“Yes, it’s still me,” he assured her. “Ask me anything you like, I’ll answer it.”

She glanced guiltily over at the constable. “Is he…?”

John went over to the body and knelt to feel for a pulse. He didn’t find one. “Gone,” he confirmed.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I didn’t…”

John seized her forearms gently to keep her from backing away. “You were protecting me, it’s okay. The man you knew was already dead anyway.”

“Then… then who, what was he?” she asked.

“Something alien,” he said.

She seemed to accept that answer with a sort of numb detachment. “What do we do now?”

He looked at the scene around them. Throughout the confrontation it had continued to snow, becoming heavier as the day progressed. Now it was falling so steadily that the visibility had dropped to a few metres.

“Home. We go home,” he decided. “You were never here. We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow.” He bent to retrieve the discarded syringe and guided her back towards their car.

—

They ended up taking both cars home, in case someone came upon Fontaine’s body before they could decide what to do about it. John knew he’d probably have to turn himself in to the police in the morning, but there were other things on his mind he needed to address before he started thinking about what he’d tell them.

He’d promised Elizabeth an explanation, for one. He owed her that much after she'd tracked him to that clearing and saved his life.

He slid open the bottom drawer of his writing desk, pulling from it a slim box containing three objects: a small, leather-bound notebook, a burnished gold fob watch, and a plain-looking silver key on a string. He placed the box atop the desk and met Elizabeth's gaze nervously.

He'd never shared these pieces of his past with her before. She knew about the nightmares, he could hardly have kept those a secret from his wife, but he'd withheld the details because he hadn't wanted to worry her needlessly. It was time to tell her everything now. He couldn't explain how he'd known what he did without showing her the journal.

“Right after the war ended, I was a bit of a shambles," he began. "I'd been discharged from hospital because there wasn’t anything more they could do for me and there were too many other chaps in worse shape who needed their attention. But there were still enormous gaps in my memory and sometimes what I could recall didn't make any sense. I wasn't sleeping through the night, couldn’t close my eyes without being back there in the thick of it." He looked at his hands and took a steadying breath.

"It played havoc with my nerves. Certain sounds would set my heart racing; my hands would start to go numb in a crowd. That’s why I came out here; London was too busy. I hoped that over time, things would improve and I’d recover some of what I'd lost to my injury.” His right hand drifted up to his scalp, brushing against the jagged scar hidden beneath his fair hair. “And I have, somewhat. You know that, but…” He paused to gauge her reaction thus far; she nodded encouragingly, pulling the heavy quilt around herself more securely.

"I’m hardly the first person to return from war a bit mad.” His self-deprecating half-smile was tinged with sadness. Elizabeth instinctively put a hand on his arm to reassure him.

“I thought my strange dreams were just how my damaged mind chose to sort out everything I'd seen,” he continued. “Easier to dream of monsters than what really happened perhaps. I started keeping a journal, recording everything I could remember from them, thinking maybe that would help. And, over time, they did seem to get better, less frequent at least." He opened the journal and flipped to the relevant page before handing it to her. She took it, but kept her eyes on him because he was still speaking.

“When this killing business got started, the nightmares came back, stronger than ever, and I told you how my migraines became more frequent. I found that I was missing time after every episode and worried maybe I had gone round the bend because they'd all coincided with the mysterious deaths. I was too thick to spot the true connection until I saw something familiar, something I knew from my dreams.” John's voice was tight with emotion and he tapped at the page before her.

Elizabeth looked down at the journal he had handed her and read in his looping scrawl a description of a creature that sounded very like the one they had encountered. Her eyes widened.

“You see, I dreamt of a war, but not the one fought here on Earth. This war was fought across the stars, waged by a host of strange and terrifying creatures. I saw whole worlds destroyed in mere moments and there was nothing I could do to prevent it. In these dreams I was always someone else, a man with twin hearts beating in his chest who had changed his face many times to escape death and fought because there was no other way.”

As he spoke, Elizabeth flipped through the other pages, taking in his notes and attempts at sketching the wonders that his dreams had revealed to him. On one page he'd drawn rough portraits of five men around a pocket watch that resembled the one resting before them on the desk. One of the men looked much like himself with longer hair. The page was labelled simply 'the Doctor.' She looked up at her husband with understanding dawning in her eyes.

“You're afraid of what else in here might be true, aren't you?”

He nodded, biting his lip. “Shouldn't I be?”

“I don't know. I don't think either of us are crazy, John, but it all just sounds so impossible. If I hadn't been there with you today, I'd never believe any of this.” She shook her head and set the notebook back on the desk. Reaching into the box, she removed the watch from it and held it up to get a better look at it in the lamplight.

“Where does this watch figure in with all of this do you suppose?” she enquired.

John's gaze focused on the golden watch and he frowned as though he'd only just now noticed it. “I haven't the foggiest. I've had that thing for ages, can't even recall where I got it from,” he answered.

He reached to take it from her and, just as his fingers closed over the watch in her hand, a series of intense images appeared in his mind in a rush of feeling. In them, he saw flashes of the red box from his dreams and the orange skies of an alien world, interspersed with glimpses of himself and Elizabeth, their life together - past, present, and perhaps future. The first time he'd kissed her in the shop after closing, reading together curled up under heavy blankets before a roaring fire as a winter storm raged outside, walking hand in hand through the forest with Ches bounding happily down the trail in front of them, starting their own family, slow dancing in their kitchen to a softly playing wireless while the children slept, growing older together...

Afraid to see how this fantasy would play out, he jerked his hand back sharply, severing the connection and ending the parade of visions prematurely. The fob watch clattered to the desk between them and they both stared at it, eyes wide with wonder, breathing heavily.

“Beth, did you see...?” he asked, breathless. She nodded and opened her mouth as if to say something but no words made it past her lips.

Cautiously, he reached out to pick the watch up again, wary of a repeat performance. When nothing happened this time, he turned it over in his hand, examining the delicate swirling patterns engraved on it, as though they might hold the answers he sought. It looked and felt like an ordinary pocket watch, but as he held it there was the most peculiar sensation at the edge of his awareness that it was whispering to him.

He frowned and pressed the catch with his thumb to open it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely none of the medical stuff John does in this is very safe and should not be replicated by anyone. Seriously, don't do speed to fight aliens, bad things will probably happen to you.


	10. Nothing Can Be Eternal

_"Planets come and go. Stars perish. Matter disperses, coalesces, forms into other patterns. Nothing can be eternal."_

Blinding golden light poured from the watch, surrounding John. He staggered back against the desk and clutched at his chest as searing pain accompanied the light. It was so sudden and so bright that Elizabeth didn't have much opportunity to react beyond a startled cry.

Gradually, the light faded, seeming to seep into his skin, leaving him standing awkwardly, hunched over, breathing shallowly.

Elizabeth stepped closer, half afraid to touch him, trying to puzzle out what had changed. He looked different, somehow, his cheeks curiously flushed as though he'd been running. The dark bruises on his throat had vanished like they’d never been there. The air in the room seemed thick with an unseen energy that made her nervous.

The Doctor straightened slowly and opened his eyes, staring blankly as a flood of missing memories returned. It felt as though no time had passed for him since the final moments of the war and Kochei's last second... betrayal? Sacrifice? _Oh Rassilon_ , what had happened to his friend? To Gallifrey? Against all odds, and indeed, his own intentions, he'd survived; had any of the others?

He reached out desperately with his mind for that faint background hum where his fellow Time Lords had always made their presence known. There was nothing there. The implications of the total silence in his head were grim.

"They're gone. They're all gone," he muttered aloud.

"...John?" Elizabeth asked tentatively. He didn't seem to hear her. The Doctor remained lost in his thoughts until she touched his shoulder gently and he flinched at the contact.

"No," he said, voice barely above a whisper, "I'm sorry, I'm not John. Never really was, I'm afraid." He recalled where he was now.

"What?"

Guilt stabbed at him sharply when he looked up at the wounded and confused expression on her face. _Elizabeth_. The details of their relationship over the past three years surged forward in his mind. He knew her, his Beth, his _wife_. He'd loved her and she him. And now he'd betrayed her in the worst possible way. Her husband was gone; lost like one of his previous incarnations, memories roughly accessible, but thought patterns, feelings, passions - all taken from him by the chameleon arch's reversal.

“If you're not John, then who are you?” she demanded of him, not unreasonably.

“I'm called the Doctor,” he answered, though the name felt like a lie after everything he'd done. Her eyes immediately went to the journal lying open on the desk; he nodded solemnly and directed her to take a seat on the bed.

She listened quietly as he explained what had happened. He could see her struggling with whether to believe him or not, but she'd seen enough that his words rang sickeningly true to her ears. One day earlier and this talk of alien worlds and ships that travelled the stars would have seemed the stuff of speculative fiction and Saturday afternoon radio programmes. Now it must have felt all too plausible.

"Can you change back?"

"Possibly," he swallowed heavily, "but it wouldn't be the same. You know the truth now. And I might not remember anything from before."

"I didn't even get to say goodbye!" she protested, her understandable anger giving way to a sob.

"I'm sorry. Truly, I am." He sighed. "You loved him and I've taken him away from you without warning."

He sat beside her as she cried, self-conscious and unsure of what to do. John would've held her close, told her that everything would be all right, and stroked her hair until she quieted, but he wasn't John. And everything wasn't going to be all right. So he handed her a handkerchief from his pocket and waited for her tears to slow before he spoke again.

"I have to find my ship. I may not be the only survivor." He paused, considering. "You could come with me. I may not be exactly the man you married, but everything that he was is still very much a part of me. We could start again, you and I," he offered, his blue eyes pleading as he reached to take her hand in his own. He might not be the same man who'd loved her, but part of him wished he was. She was beautiful and brave and clever and deserved far better than the capricious whims of fate had seen fit to grant her.

She withdrew her hand from his grasp almost as soon as he touched her. "You're so cold!" Her eyes were wide with shock, as though it was this final evidence that convinced her of the truth of his unbelievable tale.

He turned his head away from her, painfully aware of her gaze. "I'm not human any longer, Elizabeth."

"You still look the same, except for your eyes." She touched his cheek, gently bringing him back around to face her. Her voice was calm enough, but he could tell she was heartbroken. "I can't go with you. Every time I looked at your face, I'd think of him. I don't know that I can do that, even if I didn't have other responsibilities here. Who would look after my father if I disappeared?"

He nodded. He understood. In her position, would he have felt any different? Without thinking, he captured her hand with his own and guided it to his mouth where he pressed a chaste kiss against her palm. The affectionate gesture felt painfully familiar and foreign at the same time. He closed his eyes for a moment and swallowed thickly before releasing her.

“I can come back, after, if you like.” He hesitated before adding, “or not, if it would only make this harder.”

She wiped her eyes and crossed her arms protectively over her chest. “I don't know, Jo... Doctor. I think I need some time to mourn my husband.”

–

Despite the worsening weather, he found the TARDIS waiting for him nearby in the forest. He left his borrowed car parked by the side of the road for the authorities to find and return to Dr. Eugene once the storm passed. John Foreman would disappear. Absent any better suspects, he'd almost certainly take the blame for the mysterious deaths that had plagued Yellow Fork these past few weeks. Elizabeth would be left to deal with the scandal, but without any evidence implicating her in the murders, she ought to be safe from legal repercussions. 

His beloved ship's response to his urgent probing of their shared mental link was enthusiastic but weary; her presence in his mind a shining beacon calling out to him. She guided him home to the clearing where she had waited patiently for more than three years for him to return to himself. Not the longest he'd ever made her wait, but long enough, considering where they'd been just before this.

The plain silver key turned smoothly in the lock despite the cold and he swung the wooden door open with great relief. Once inside, he shook the snow from his clothes and hair and placed his hands reverently against the console.

“Hello again, old girl. Did you miss me?”

Her lights flickered in response and she sent a pulse of a friendly, warm orange colour through their telepathic connection. He smiled sadly and set about programming in the coordinates for Gallifrey. He knew that going back there was probably a bad idea but he had to see for himself what had become of his home planet.

The ship shuddered violently and several alarms rang out as soon as they neared their destination; he gripped the console tightly and adjusted the temporal parameters until the shaking subsided. He straightened warily and checked the monitor. The TARDIS had materialised in space, forced off of its original target by the time lock that would have sealed itself shut when the war ended.

There was no sign of Gallifrey. Though the twin stars she had orbited still burned, not a trace of his world remained in the system. The Moment had been thorough then; the scanner showed that not even residual radiation from the massive battles fought here lingered. He pressed a button to activate the external atmospheric shell and walked to the doors. There were some things best seen with one's own eyes rather than on a viewer screen.

The silence in his mind made his hearts ache. The terrible war that had nearly spelled the end of the universe itself was over, but now he was truly alone. He thought of all the star systems that had been destroyed, timelines unravelled, in the wake of the Daleks' and Time Lords' conflict and felt ashamed as he mourned the passing of his own world. Pity the Doctor, the foolish Time Lord who could've prevented all of this if only he'd stopped the Daleks in their infancy when he'd had the chance.

He wanted to hate himself for the moment of compassion that had stayed his hand on Skaro, the indecision that later kept him from killing Davros when he'd had the man at his mercy. Instead, he hated himself for what he'd become. A man who, given the chance to replay those events of his life, likely _would_ touch those wires together or pull the trigger. The man who'd piloted his TARDIS to the Eye of Harmony with the intention of ending it all.

Was he still that man? After living as a human on Earth for years, working as a doctor, saving lives, experiencing genuine love and affection, could he really say that he was the same man that had taken up the Moment? John Foreman had been the sort of man he'd wanted to be - kind and compassionate, brave when unknown dangers threatened his friends and family. Willing to sacrifice himself to protect those he loved. How much of that had been himself, how much the false persona that the TARDIS had invented for him?

He'd been happy as John, he knew that. And John hadn't been alone; he'd had Elizabeth, his friends and colleagues, a dog, even his father-in-law. People who cared about him and would be hurt, like Elizabeth was, by his sudden disappearance and the accusations that would follow. Now that his mind had fully reasserted itself, he felt a wave of regret for abandoning Elizabeth.

Did he still love her? Was that even a fair question to ask himself? In a sense, they were strangers to one another, except she wasn't really, because he knew her intimately. Every memory of her that John had treasured was his now, swirling about in his mind. At least part of him still cared for her deeply, he knew. The feelings associated with those memories were still attached, just distantly, overlaid with new layers of guilt and sadness. It was an extremely confusing position to be in.

The Doctor pushed away from the doorway, shutting the wooden doors on Gallifrey's invisible grave, and stalked back to the console. He needed to see her again, if only to reassure himself that she would be all right without him. If she changed her mind and asked him to stay, he knew in an instant that he would; he owed her both his life and his sanity. If she needed him, he'd be there for her. Whatever that entailed.

The TARDIS landed gently behind Claremont's hardware store in town. He'd nudged the temporal dial forward somewhat from when he'd left to give her enough time to mourn her husband, as she'd requested. He wasn't sure quite how long it'd been as he stepped outside, but the temperature and his time senses told him it was mid-summer, nearing four o'clock. He left his heavy coat behind in the ship.

It was a short walk to the bookshop, which was just as well since the Doctor didn't fancy running into anyone he knew until after he'd spoken with Elizabeth. If she didn't want to see him, it would be best for everyone if he disappeared cleanly.

The bell on the door jangled as he entered the shop, but it was empty at the moment. Soft music from a radio played in the background. She must be in the back or upstairs talking to her father. Rather than call out her name, he browsed furtively, waiting for her to appear on her own, tapping his fingers across the spines of several books nervously as he tried to think of what he'd say when he saw her. He noted that she'd expanded the science fiction section since he'd left. He flipped through an illustrated copy of _The Time Machine_ briefly before he grew anxious enough to approach the counter to check the office.

“Hello?” he called. “Elizabeth?”

“Hello,” a small voice answered him. He looked down to see a young girl sitting on the ground behind the counter, a book open in her lap. She had blond hair pulled back in an untidy plait and wore a checked blue dress with scuffed brown and white shoes.

“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there,” he greeted her. “I was looking for Mrs. Foreman, is she here?" The girl wrinkled her nose in confusion. "Or Mr. Frasier perhaps?” he tried, though possibly the last person he wanted to face right now was Elizabeth's father.

She looked at him oddly for a moment before replying, “I can fetch my granddad if you'd like, he's upstairs. If you just need to buy something, I know how to work the register. Dad lets me count out the drawer every night," she added proudly.

The Doctor stared at her in shock; he had been gone far longer than he'd intended. Upon closer examination, it was perfectly evident that she was Elizabeth's daughter. He could see her in the shape of the girl's face, the graceful curve of her eyebrows, and the forest of freckles across her sunburnt cheeks. The recognition made his hearts lurch painfully. She watched him expectantly for several seconds before he realised that there'd been an implicit question in her reply.

“Ah, no, thank you, that won't be necessary,” he answered. He should go. Elizabeth had obviously moved on; it wouldn't do for him to reappear in her life now. He couldn't stop himself asking one more question before he left though. “Your mother, she is... happy, isn't she?”

The girl looked at him like he was insane. “Nevermind, sorry to have troubled you,” he mumbled quickly and fled the shop.

The Doctor hurried back to the TARDIS and began circling the console, flicking switches violently to cue the dematerialization sequence before allowing himself to pause and reflect on the feelings that learning Elizabeth had gone on with her life had stirred in him. He rubbed at his face with his hands, breathing deeply as he fought back against this unexpected burst of emotion. He had no right to feel bereft or jealous or disappointed or whatever it was he was feeling right now. He'd taken her husband from her and vanished for several years. What did he expect her to do? Wait for him? He should be delighted that she'd found someone else who cared for her and had a beautiful daughter with him. She deserved to be happy.

He looked down at himself in disgust; he still wore the clothes of that human man whose life he'd accidentally ended in the blink of an eye. After setting the TARDIS to spin back into the time vortex, he headed for the interior of the ship, shedding his jacket and tugging at his tie as he went. It suddenly felt imperative that he change clothes as quickly as possible. Even though there was no one there to see him, it seemed wrong to continue on dressed as he was, an impostor in another man's shoes.

Before the war, it had become something of a tradition for him that whenever he changed his face, he'd venture deep into the TARDIS wardrobe (or whatever was handy at the time) to select a new outfit. He usually then maintained that style with some small variations for the duration of that incarnation. While in the greater scheme of things, it didn't really matter what he wore, so long as it fit, he'd found it helped ease the transition, both for himself and any companions he had with him. No fresh face this time, maybe never again, but all the same, he needed a change.

He'd favoured a beige coat and cricketing gear when he'd first acquired this face, until the realities of the war had led him to adopt a more utilitarian style. He resisted the idea of returning to his old clothes though. The latter were too strongly associated with that version of himself he hated, nor indeed did it feel appropriate for him to don a cricket jumper and celery again either. Too much had happened since he was that man. It was time for something different.

When he returned to the console room, he wore a reddish-brown frock coat over dark striped trousers and a slate grey waistcoat. Simple and unassuming, it suited his mood.

The TARDIS had supplied him with several white shirts that had black question marks embroidered on the collars. It was an affectation his fourth incarnation had started late in his life and he'd carried on into his fifth out of habit. The joke was entirely lost on nearly everyone he ever encountered, but it had made him smile a little to see them in the wardrobe, which was rather the idea, he suspected. There was at least one glimmer of hope in the darkness if he could still smile, however fleeting.

He knew he'd gotten the clothes right when he looked in the mirror and felt a bit like the Doctor again, armoured to face the universe.

Reaching for the controls once more, the glint of something metal on his left hand caught his eye; he'd forgotten to take off John's wedding ring. He went to remove it, but stopped, staring at the simple gold band in the cool blue light of the time rotor.

It was a very human symbol, laden with multiple layers of meaning, tradition, and cultural mores. On worlds that practised formalised relationships like marriage, some kind of physical marker or token denoting the partners' status was common. For John, his ring had represented a promise he'd made to share his life with a woman he loved. He'd kept that vow faithfully until the outside universe had intervened.

As the direct cause of that shattered commitment, the Doctor really had no right to continue wearing the ring. Still, he hesitated. Dispensing with it unceremoniously seemed as much of an offence as keeping it on. It occurred to him how ironic it was that he'd felt like an imposter in the man's clothes only minutes ago, but was uncomfortable parting with this last vestige of a human life unfulfilled. John was only a small part of him now, and if he wanted to follow the steadfast and honourable example he'd set in his short existence, maybe the Doctor could use a visible reminder of who he'd been.

Perhaps that was why he left the ring on his finger and resumed his examination of the TARDIS scanner, perhaps it was merely his guilty conscience. There would be ample opportunity to second guess his decision and motives later. For now, he would wear it for John and the promise he'd made.

None of his co-conspirators' locator beacons were registering on his sweeps, but that didn't necessarily mean that there weren't a few of them out there, still living out anonymous lives under the influence of a chameleon arch. Their ships might be lying dormant, as his had, patiently awaiting their Time Lords' return. He had a vague idea where some of them might go to hide, but a careful search might take him centuries.

Best get started then.

\--- oOo ---

_The Doctor will return in his next adventure,_ Flight of the Serendipity _, coming soonish!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELL NOW. It only took me the better part of three years to get this story finished, but here we are!
> 
> Thanks and eternal gratitude are due to my readers, everyone who left comments or kudos, listened to me bitch about plot things and writer's block (you know who you are <3), and helped with all the research this required (special mention goes to my partner, who looked up heaps of info on period-appropriate pharmaceuticals for me - he's the best, seriously).
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this story. If you've made it all the way through to the end, please do leave a comment letting me know what you thought, even if you're reading this months from now. I'm always delighted to hear from you guys.


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